Map Generator 3.0 - Please Critique!

[Zeustiak]

Got the scrolling working, and it looks and feels amazing!

I housed all the parameters in the material with a Material Parameter Collection. Then I put the Parameter Collection in the master materials and plugged it into all the relevant points. Then, in my Character blueprint I called on the parameter from the Parameter Collection and tied the position of the Offset Parameter to the Character position and used a Tick to update the parameter on the fly. So, as the character moves around, the Offset position moves with it. It looks like the world is sitting directly underneath you spinning around as you move. It is pretty sweet.

So now that I have it moving, I was able to confirm that the world is too curved, which was corrected by doubling the radius. The previous radius gave a full circle between the poles, when really I needed it to go all the way around. That also made the planet look much smaller than it really was. Here is how the same sized map looks with the proper radius:

This entire process was amazingly easy, especially with the Material Parameter Collection walkthrough: Material Parameter Collections - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

@Fen;213980

Awesome ! ^^ Reminds me dune 1 and other world games like (not the look of course ^^) . Gives me desire to rotate / zoom / click and play on it.

Now that you can actually rotate and zoom the sphere it is great! Now I just need to fix the clicking part.

@;214130

That is looking REALLY cool ! XD

Collision is something that I’ve thought about, and basically, you’d need to run the same math on your collision shapes, to get them into position, but then rotate them into position by having them face towards (or away from) the center of the sphere (the offset point). The fact you’re using hexes and the distortion caused by the math would probably mean some level of offset to scale would be needed or the culling of collision outside of a truly usable area at the top of the sphere.

If I get a moment today I’ll see if I can toss something together to show what I mean.

I really appreciate the help you have been providing! I didn’t even consider any of this as a remote possibility, and then bam! it all works.

Early on in development I was toying with creating the globe by physically aligning all the tiles in space, but even after I worked out the rough position and rotation of a few tiles they didn’t mesh well at the edges so I gave up on that. Wished I had saved the work because I think it would be pretty useful now for the volumes.

I don’t think I ever worked out the math to tile the whole sphere into a globe though.

@Veovis Muad'dib;214164

What I’d suggest from here is to have the material dynamic based on zoom level.

Zoomed in all the way - flat.

Zoom out all the way - the above image.

Anywhere in-between interpolates, with a bias toward flat.

I am going to have to toy with tying the Radius to the scroll wheel. I think that could basically accomplish what you are talking about. I don’t think it will be necessary on the larger maps, but the smaller maps will probably benefit quite a bit.