Experimental VOXEL terrain build feedback

[Ronyn]

Reapers!
Welcome to the new experimental Voxel Terrain Build - A new experimental build showing off the start of our journey into exploring voxel terrain. However, for testing purpose, any changes will be revert any modifications after a few seconds.

This would function as a solution for our need to modify terrain in order for our base building systems to function. Additionally this may open the door to procedural cave systems.

Please hop in and check it out. Let us know how it performs.

DISCLAIMER:
Currently the assault rifle and plasma cannon can blast holes in the ground. That is simply there to test the system. The actual implementation of this system will likely be more refined and limited. For now we are just full out to let people play with it and tell us what wild ideas you have.

 

[Faeryl]

 

[Skube]

First bug:
deepstryking from high enough you fall though the terrain and die
If you dig deep enough the fogs start to obscure your vision and you eventually get stuck and you can't move
You can Missile lock on Tsi-Hu that are far out of sight in another thumper encounter

 

[Pandagnome]

First bug:
deepstryking from high enough you fall though the terrain and die
If you dig deep enough the fogs start to obscure your vision and you eventually get stuck and you can't move

That was the first thing i did to see if i could go to the other side of the planet

 

[Yourafail]

Found a few bugs around deepstriking:
If you deepstrike with a low roof above your head (meaning you have to fly slightly) (works with spawn roof, small holes and the tail of the drop ship) you get stuck in the fall animation. You can't get out or move without having to quit.
If you deepstrike onto a Tsihu rock thing (the big black spires), you can get glitched inside them and if you fly out you bounce up and down glitching along in the air in fall animation again.

If you summon a thumper, then dig a hole under where it will spawn/land, it summons portal and some enemies, then disappears and may bug other thumpers from being spawned.

I'm guessing it may not have been done yet, but reloading in first person does not show the animation.

 

[Pandagnome]

Can someone explain what this voxel is it is the first time i have heard of this?

What other things are there so far all i hear is the
Nanite and voxel are there anything else and if so can they be mixed?

Are there any disadvantages and advantages for each or challenges if mixing too?

 

[Sy]

On a 1030 at 1080p windowed fullscreen.

At medium graphics settings I'm easily getting 60 fps.

At high it's 25 solid. On epic it's still around there too.

Scanning will freeze things up for a moment.

These are good numbers for me. I expect that with many people around I'd have acceptable tweaked medium settings.

I don't know what the numpad is supposed to do; fps doesn't change (with numlock on or off)

There used to be a feature to make my frame display at lower graphics quality. I loved that effect and now I can't find it.

The mouse sensitivity is perfect even at different quality settings.

I only lasted for some exploration and a thumper encounter and now I have a horrible eye/headache from the brightness. I've described this problem before, and it has to get fixed because it literally damages my vision. Turn the 1 into a 0 and get rid of that horrifying brightness.

 

[zdoofop]

1. Building terrain around bases the same way we build bases to be walls/bunkers/etc

2. Grummz suggested cave encounters. Of course caves would have to have enemies of some sort. My ideas to add to this are that caves have a unique resource you can only find in a cave encounter, and that a cave encounter is triggered by moving some rocks or something, actually physically discovering the cave rather than just finding one in the world.

3. Someone suggested inter-base tunnels. Great idea. Better idea: inter-base subway system.

EDIT: 4. Going back to the cave encounters, what if resources (and enemies) weren't the only things you could find? What about lore elements? What about ancient tech you could scan and research to unlock new tech?

 

[ScorpyX]

===== Voxel Landscape - terrain
- Terraforming feels good - working fast
- Landscape LODs kind of rough - noticeble change at switching different levels with different distance
- if shoot at far distance - terraforming not working on far LOD
but if i make a pit and fly away - it will be working properly - even with LODs
- Character Collision agains terraformed ground can give sound glitches and other different glitches
(you can just run and jump IN terraformed edge - will get glitches always - Not critical)
- If Player will be in same place with "filling terrain" - Player character will stuck
but its kind of easy to getout by shooting again
i guess need some smart system to slowly push player "out"
Or just limit height of deformation
* Also - i as player dont want to see teraforming in Bases zone (Home, etc)
maybe building will be on Legs and maybe ground will be replaced with "unchanging" theme ground

* Whole Small-Terraforming thing Feels very good - i like it
adds to "more dynamic world" feel
But it should be more like VFX and not game mechanics
otherwise it will become annoying thing
or reverse - will get more attention then core-gameplay
Something like "why shoot at war - then you can minecraft" lol


===== Other stuff
- Text at start screen is very useful - thank you for adding this
- New Shells VFX of rifle and exploasion VFX of divebomb is Amazing - i love it (especially Shells)
- Shooting from camera to cursor visually not appealing at close distances BEHIND PLAYER
if camera center will ray-cast(trace) object - which is behind of player character (its very noticeble)
some trick like not shooting or "lowring gun animation" can help in furute development
- Snow VFX at Center of Camera with Gliding is very Annoying
it is not transparent and interferes with the Front view!!!
just make it little bit spread around Center of View (Camera)
- Why at some Height now is Invisible Flat Wall (Roof)
will be nice if it will be Soft Colide instead of Hard Flat Roof (Immersion Breaker)
- Landscape(Terrain) was without Materials (Grey) i guess its intended
but why Sky Atmosphere is Dark? just add hemisphere color please...
like classic Earthy Blue (Hue 220)
- Can you please make Character Cloth Emmisive line Less Brighter
on new models of course - I mean dont do overexposed emissive materials please

~ 90-110 fps all the time. Very Smooth - 3440x1440 GTX2070 (not super), CPU i7-3770 3.4GHz, 16gb ram

PS. Thank you for your work guys
I hope development continues - and you guys have fun with it
Things what you do - bring some joy to my life...

 

[punkbuzter#6186]

My collective report.

Performance:
70+ FPS at 1080p (epic)
50+ FPS at 1440p (epic with AntiAliasing OFF)
40+ FPS at 1440p (epic)
70+ FPS at 4k (medium)
I have FPS limiter set to 72-75



Bugs:
Even tho settings are correct visually, sometimes they don't apply on login until you go to menu and hit "Apply" without change, as if launcher defaults something but can't read the settings.ini (old issue).

Deepstriking from incredible heights gets you clipping through terrain.
Gliding with high speed straight down gets you clipping through terrain.
The visual effects from the Plasma Canon has incredible impact on performance (~20-25 frames) (old issue).
All weapon ranges are too short (Plasma and Assault Rifle) (old issue).
Sometimes when ground repairs itself, you can still fall through the repaired ground.
Sometimes various patches of ground takes different amounts of time to repair.
Sometimes repaired ground leaves small scars (mini craters) the size of a bullet hole.
Glide spazm attacks still a problem (old issue).
Running/walking uphill on uneven (jagged) terrain can put character into a halt.

Touching walls with the side of your omniframe halts thrusting (spacebar) movement which makes climbing out of holes complicated (old issue).

Clouds from thrusting in 3rd person does not look centered from my perspective, and looks too far ahead from another players perspective (old issue).

There's still a problem with delay using the Assault Rife, where you click for individual bullets sometimes right after holding down LMB the weapon no longer fires, as if it gets stuck in a loop (old issue).

Sometimes when scateboarding terrain after gliding, you get a jittery landing which appears as halfway finished... The other half of that animation can appear at a later time touching random surfaces while walking.



Forum Feedback:
Default font is complicated, there's no visual difference between i and l, and the font changes upon posting to another font that's actually readable. Make whatever font used "when posted" the default for writing a post too. The website does not seem to remember my last used font so it defaults to the unreadable one (old issue).

Sometimes when writing a word and erasing it, the last letter erased also erases the space between the previous word blending two words that shouldn't.


:: CONCLUSION ::
It's an interesting idea, performance wise solid with a bit of hickups under certain conditions.
Also, perhaps change AntiAliasing method or give alternatives with names of the specific AA's instead of just naming them Low, Medium, High, I'd like to see FXAA, MSAA 4X, TXAA, etc...


Ideas:
I'd like to see this concept applied to things like Base Building, as mentioned during Chief Chat, a mix of Minecraft and Planetside 2 where asset-bases such as pre-built ones for quests and social areas have an untouchable area around them, and players can set permissions from other random players griefing terrain around custom bases such as "party members only" or "clan members only". Planetside 2 has permissions for base building which is edited via base-core terminal (the first silo you deploy before expanding a base), and the default is locked and you'll see a red circle around that players base on map which means you can't build another one nearby, but you can be accepted via permissions and help expand the base with your own tools/structures and resources.
Minecraft has this "claim chunk" options where nobody but the owner and his party members can edit those chunks. But these buildings and edits to terrain needs to be wiped at some point, or the planet will look like the starting area of 2B2T Minecraft Server. Not only because of that, but it'll also be good for the server, wiping any possible bugs that could occur from automatic ground repair, for stability of the server, and for player's performance.

[edit: minor correction]

 

[deprite]

Between 170-230 fps at 1440p all epic on a 2080ti. I can confirm the fall through ground with deepstrike from certain heights.

Kaiju HAVE to leave impressions on the world!
I would say with a big enough team effort it would be nice to have some medium timed (for Kaiju fights?) impact on the gameworld.

P.s. Fast growing environment could be explained with some Eureka(anime) type fungi world xD )

 

[ScorpyX]

Can someone explain what this voxel is it is the first time i have heard of this?

What other things are there so far all i hear is the
Nanite and voxel are there anything else and if so can they be mixed?

Are there any disadvantages and advantages for each or challenges if mixing too?

Voxels - in simple words is units of Space.. like sugar-cubes - but they also may look "Smooth"
imagine several cubes of clay knocked together into a single whole
This is how voxels works... - This technology approach used in many different ways
Voxels used in many games more than 20+ years
In this Demo - it just "Clay" for Ground - nothing more

Nanite is completely different beast!
it was invented and made in few final year by "Epic Games" company and added in "Unreal Engine 5" (only 5)
This technology allows you to display any number of objects on the screen... on any PC, Console, or mobile screen
But this is very young technology - it is still being finalized
and new developers need time to learn how to use it in full power
In Fresh demo "Matrix Awakens" the whole city is displayed due to this technology ... in Real Time

 

[Cyborean]

3060TI - 2560X1440 - getting 114-150 FPS at EPIC settings. Very playable. As far as technology feedback goes - I'm with Grummz here, ultimately gameplay should always come first and it seems fairly obvious that voxels allow for the greatest flexibility towards this goal. More than willing to sacrifice a bit of beauty for gameplay. Caves, more interesting base configs, weather/storms/weapons that might actually alter the landscape - (Imagine planning an invasion night deep into enemy territory only to have a stormwall hit and begin tearing up the landscape along with your defenses - the adventure writes itself) . . . tons and tons of ideas.

 

[Skum]

ryzen 5950 - rtx 3090 - 4k epic: I think it dipped down to about 210 at one point.. pretty solid @ 220-240 in general

at a few points sticking in the deformed terrain, and DEFINITELY a bit glitchy if you dig yourself into a hole and let it heal around you hehe.

Should be interesting to see what you can do with it (a few games I've played have things like armor deformation on ships / buildings as they get more damaged, etc)

 

[DHYohko]

3070ti but a 1080p monitor, solid 60

as for ideas for this new tech there are a few

subterranean kaiju and weapons to counter them: after they make there appearance players realize that they need specific weapons to counter them as well as specific tech to detect them such as underground sonar and drilling torpedoes.

Dynamic event, Geofront breakthrough: randomly when a player drops there thmpr it can trigger a event where it detects a giant void bellow it and after a few minutes it breaks through it allowing players to drop in. because it's underground players need to do the mining themselves as there thmprs can't be dropped in. The geofront will eventually close up due to the Tsi-hu so it's a race against time to gather as much as possible.

 

[punkbuzter#6186]

Here's some various ideas in no particular order... Crazy stuff, brainstorm activated!

1. I can see lots of stuff being produced from base, such as vehicles, gear, tools, and various components for crafting etc... But what would also be cool is allowing some stuff that's spawnable outside of base to come in as a drop pod from "social hub" in space, like Space Marines gets their reinforcements.
Kind of like Planetside 2 does it with their squad beacons, when using the squad beacon you spawn in a drop pod from the sky. As the drop pod lands, these voxels would make a nice graphical crater for more realistic immersion as sugar on top.

2. If these voxels could be combined with UE5's Chaos Destruction, you'd have a game that'll be an industry leader. Imagine an Ion Cannon -alike weapon from Command & Conquer, a light beam from space hitting the ground and you'll see how the ground cracks open and various parts of it just rises and floats mid air before the Ion blats nukes a crater in the ground.

3. I could also see very heavy vehicles shredding the ground around their wheels. Perhaps if you give the world layers of different functioning terrain, you'd end up with a thin top layer that's destructable by vehicles and weapons, a lower level for base building, and the lowest levels for (as mentioned during Chief Chat) cave systems during Kaiju encounters as the world transforms into their homeland.

4. Not only can this be applied to vehicles, bases or super weapons, but also to general combat... Watch this combat scene and notice how the snow leaves trails from both characters, and their skills/attacks.

5. Natural disasters could deform the terrain too, such as earthquakes causing wide cracks down to the molten core of the planet, or volcanic eruptions... Or something ancient digging underground like an earth worm (thinking about the Abyss encounter in Path of Exile)

 

[Gigabear]

I've played many games with voxel tech, or its precursors. Those include Vigilante 8, Red Faction, and Ghen War to name a few oldies, and more recently, No Man's sky("research" this one Grummz!) where I even modded the terrain manipulator.

First, there are valid concerns with this system. If players have the ability to significantly modify terrain, griefing will be an issue. In most cases the easiest way I can see to mitigate the problem is to heal the terrain back slowly by raising it back into position, and not instantly respawn it above someone so they would end up trapped. We all have jump jets, so getting out of a fairly small hole wouldn't be too hard. As well, no-terraform zones around stuff you don't want messed with will also help.

Secondly, the only weapons that should make craters of any real size should probably also be fairly long refire times. Stuff like artillery and exploding plasma weapons. These don't have to make massive holes the size of a zipcode or anything, just a small deformation is sufficient to sell the fantasy. Finally, player weapons will need a limit on how far they can lower the terrain to prevent players from colluding to build massive potholes to wreck vehicles or something.

Third, and this is actually a performance concern, propagating hundreds of potential terrain modifications a second during a big battle might be problematic in relation to networking. So, the classes of weapons and effects which can modify terrain at all should be limited from both the enemy(mostly kaiju) and the player standpoint(big guns).

Now, with those concerns out of the way, what am I most excited for in relation to this system?

Far more realistic kaiju. Footprints. Craters from powerful attacks. More immersive base destruction. And going beyond the current scope, I'm also VERY interested in land claims, and allowing much greater control over the terrain by the player who owns them. There is a niche of players who would probably play the game mostly just for that system if it were supported enough.

Procedural caves are definitely possible. An entire network of volcanic chasms would only make sense on a world with the geological characteristics of EM-8ER

Finally, to reiterate, No Man's Sky would be a great game to play to get ideas on exactly these sorts of systems. Overall I'm very bullish on this feature.

 

[liandri]

Keeping in mind that the terrain damage is exaggerated, some thoughts. Putting everything under spoiler tags, because this got long.

Performance increase is noticeable. Running in a 1920*1080 windowed on Epic so I could watch the stream and Discord, pretty consistent 70-100 (capped) FPS. I had this on the last demo, but had significant drops around nanite. All in all, it's an improvement. Destroying terrain doesn't seem to affect FPS at all, even if your assault rifle rate of fire is increased.
At 3440*1440 full screen on Epic, same thing, 70-100FPS even with a few players, even in a THMPR encounter.

Spoiler: Bugs

!!! - The deepstryke bug still is not fixed. There were 3 people I noticed on stream who were stuck in it. Even Grummz got stuck near the end.

- Getting stuck in the terrain every now and again, when either moving too fast or if the terrain regenerates around you.

- Some deaths spawn your killcam in the centre of the map. There's a location where assault rifles repeatedly spawn and fall from the sky and through the ground. These are actually TSI-HU weapons, and make their pulse rifle firing sound. Video here:

- Fire rate increase is also happening sometimes when you're stuck in the ground. Same as firing immediately after Overthrusting and while sliding on occasion.

- Firing under a THMPR before it lands causes it to spin and not land immediately.
--+ Edit 31/12/2021 1621: With my client not showing regerated terrain, I can make the THMPR spin thorughout an entire encounter including when it is picked up by a dropship.

- Firing under a THMPR, or any enemy, causes it to fall into the hole. If the terrain regenerates, they fall through the world and hit the kill barrier. This can end the THMPR encounter.
--+ Firing under a crystal doesn't cause it to move or fall again however. I have not been able to do this BEFORE it lands however.
--+ Ending a THMPR encounter this way stops you from spawning another THMPR in the area for a while.

- Scanning for resources on mountainous terrain works, but more often then not, they appear underground.
--+ As a side note, you can thump in sloped areas you normally couldn't by levelling the terrain. Since calling a THMPR on sloped terrain could entirely break the Tsi-hu spawning, there is an opportunity for cheese here.

- Seen players explode when running away from them but they get better when you get close again. Visual bug.
--+ Also when players log out nearby, they explode.

- Deepstryking from over 500m will cause you to clip through the ground and immediately die. Using an exploit, I increased the game speed and could do the same thing around 100m.
--+ Edit 25/12/2021 0046: Gliding at maximum speed will clip you through the ground also. In a couple of tests, I could hit the ground and slide briefly before being clipped through the ground.

- Missile Swarm does not damage the terrain, which you would think it would.

- Terrain regeneration bubble is inconsistent.

- Edit 24/12/2021 1644: That annoying jumpjet issue is still there too, but just didn't notice it when dealing with holes.

? If someone has the time, it would be interesting to test what happens to a spectator if they are in a terrain area that will regenerate. Will they appear under the ground? Will the terrain not regen while they are there?
--+ Edit 25/12/2021 0046: No effect. The spectator cam clips through the ground anyway.

- Terrain regeneration is weird. Like how the server doesn't always keep track of other player's frames, it doesn't always keep track of regeneration. I logged in twice to see how the terrain generates for multiple people. Using my Red frame to blast two holes in the ground under my Green frame, the Red client's terrain regenerated normally but it did not for the Green client.

--+ Tested this again using a different account instead of the same, in case the server was confused that there were two of me. Still occurring. Furthermore:
+ Jumping into the space where the hole should be causes you to endlessly fall.
+ People who can't see the hole see you clip through the ground.
+ People who can see the hole see you land normally.
+ If you're falling, you can shoot under the terrain.

- Edit 25/12/2021 0447: Dying with the C/radial menu open can break the player camera in both first and third person. You can no longer turn the camera with the mouse without also holding the right mouse button. Seems to fix itself after a bit.

- Edit 29/12/2021 1434: While the terrain near the middle of the map heals fast, the edges of the map take 1-2 minutes to start healing. You can do dig some pretty big holes. Or slice off part of a mountain for lunch.

Update. Somehow managed to slice a full piece off the mountain on US.

--+ Edit 31/12/2021 1621: Might just be a bug with my client/account, since I can now destroy terrain anywhere in the demo and not have it regenerate for me visually. I can't see terrain I've destroyed regenerate, nor can I destroy it again. It seems to regenerate randomly in pieces and it makes no difference if I am near it or now.
--+ Edit 05/01/2022 2321: After a server restart, the issue was resolved temporarily. It has since returned. Checking the log, it's full of events such as this:
[2022.01.05-12.57.01:793][257]LogNetPackageMap: Warning: FNetGUIDCache::SupportsObject: VoxelProceduralMeshComponent /Game/Em8er/Maps/VoxelThumper/Whitebox_Thumper_Voxel.Whitebox_Thumper_VoxelersistentLevel.VoxelWorld_0.VoxelProceduralMeshComponent_2147480928 NOT Supported.

- Edit 05/01/2022 0613: Missile swarm can pick up targets approximately 1-1.2KM away. Upon firing, the missiles appear to fly in a random direction (in my case, forward for a bit, then back about 20m behind me and down, then towards the target). At maximum distance, they eventually explode in the air. It looks really cool though.

- Edit 05/01/2022 0613: Not really a relevant bug that needs fixing, but I expect it to come up eventually. The WalkAction command accessible by rebinding it under Input.ini works, but in third-person the camera appears to go to FOV 1 or something.

- Edit 05/01/2022 0613: As above, the DebugWidget remains on screen after death in a bugged state. You can activate the DebugWidget again after respawn and it'll appear over the bugged one.

- Edit 06/01/2022 2321: Explosions from the plasma cannon and bullets from the assault rifle propagate through solid elements like the dropship and the bases, damaging the terrain through them.

Getting into some opinions...

Spoiler: What I Like

- More interesting terrain elements in the form of caves, caverns, overhangs, etc. I took this screenshot after burrowing into a mountain. Looks really natural.

- World interaction. Completely agree with what was brought up on stream. Why have a terraforming game if you can't terraform. Literally putting your mark on the world rather than being a cut and paste "chosen one" is one of the reasons I follow EM-8ER.

- Lumen. I played around with UE5. If it can handle the terrain changes, awesome.

- RED FACTION WAS A GREAT GAME. In one of the first levels, there's a bridge with a convoy moving across it. If you have enough ammo, and want to risk your life, you can blow the bridge out and destroy the entire thing. While I doubt this would be applicable to EM-8ER, natural land bridges could be destroyed to cause enemies to reroute.

Spoiler: What I Don't Like

- The lack of terrain textures. Hard to tell if it'll look good and how exactly the land deformation affects the textures (grass > dirt > rock). Render distance is a concern as well, since low LOD in this build looks very sad.

- Further to above, terrain durability and the resistance to change. VoxelPro appears to support it, but how will it be implemented and where. Can heavy objects such as THMPRs and Space Trucks remove grass as they traverse the terrain, then break rock and dirt with tools? Can a player with a laser cannon burn to rock, but an SMG will do nothing against dirt?

- Red Faction again related to above. RF 1 had multiple types of terrain you could destroy, but some terrain was invulnerable to stop the player from escaping the map or sequence-breaking. In areas where this tech is used, players still need to be restricted to some degree.

- The lack of any other terrain elements. If there were trees or boulders in the demo, they would float. How would this be addressed in areas with plants, rocks, etc.?

- Looking at other voxel-based games on the market, graphic fidelity doesn't appear to be a common trait. Checking the VoxelPro website showcase, there are a couple that have what I see for EM-8ER, but without knowing how the game will look (since we're apparently not going to see textured terrain until immediately before the mockup, something I still think is ridiculous) I'm a bit concerned.

- Gravity. Something I remember from voxel-based shooters is that you always need to be concerned about those tiny pieces that are left floating when you destroy terrain. Will the terrain have gravity to avoid these little things, or simply remove them if they are too small?

- My detail in the demo never looked as crisp as Grummz' did on stream, even with everything on Epic and the LOD (presumably) maxed out.

Spoiler: My thoughts on use cases...

I've split this section into two: Activated, where voxels are interactable by players, Limited, where there are limitations noted, and Deactivated, where they are used for terrain only.

I've done this, as I tentatively agree that this is the right way to go for building more natural terrain. I do not know how well it will mesh with the terraforming theme of the game in a technical sense (ie. how areas change when terraformed, how the AI respond to changes, how buildings and other static objects are affected, fluid simulation, etc.) and am going with the assumption that Crixa wouldn't have shown this off without making these considerations.

Activated - Special events.
Using the Firefall 'Melding Tornado' event as an example, the Melding tornado rocks and core could be destructible. The tornado itself carving a swathe through the land. Upon entering the tornado, terrain can be destroyed for access to resources, while the routes to get up and out of the event are invulnerable.

Limited - Main gameplay areas.
*Destruction limited based on material (grass, dirt, rock, bedrock) and damage type (ballistic, explosive, weight damage).
Weapons deal realistic games to the terrain which generates slowly over time. Light ballistic weapons may not deal damage, whereas large energy weapons and explosives can carve into the landscape to a degree.
The Tsi-hu's heavier weapons can do the same as player weapons.
The kaiju can destroy areas as needed, with the regeneration time being extended to assist the kaiju in moving through the new hole in the terrain.
Heavy vehicles leave track marks. Lighter vehicles, such as personal mounts, do not.
Lore-wise, this could be justified by the existence of the Tsi-hu time prison. The world could be affected even when fully-terraformed, with the natural flow of time and space still being disrupted by the prison's technology.

Deactivated - Bases.
Attempting to drop a Nexus in an area should check if the land is flat enough and large enough to support. Upon dropping the Nexus, any land that isn't flat could be carved out by the nexus itself. Areas that aren't flat enough (detected by how steep the slopes are) could be excluded as a build zone. Having a base-building specific vehicle to change the terrain sounds cool, but it also sounds like unnecessary feature creep.

Spoiler: Asked in Discord about Grummz' previous project involving blockchain technology and didn't get an answer...

Voxelnauts, for Mek Entertainment. Also a voxel-based MMO, but nothing like EM-8ER in other aspects. Would have been interested to hear about that and how Grummz went with those elements, considering he's talking about NFTs and such a lot on Twitter at the moment... But I suppose we'll just hear about it on Twitter.

tl;dr~
Positives: Interesting as a terrain/world building tool. Destructible terrain makes sense with the theme of terraforming and I wholeheartedly believe that it will add more immersion if it is utilised correctly.
Opens up the possibility of destructible buildings by kaiju which was previously brought up.

Negatives: Implementation in the demo was unfortunate. My initial negative thoughts were heavily based off of how much deformation the assault rifle did. Needs to be dialled back to certain scenarios only.
Despite Grummz' placations, people are 100% going to grief or meta with this and you're going to be hard pressed to stop them.
A bit concerned about the level of detail capable with voxel terrain, given what most other voxel-based games are on the market (some exceptions, but they aren't MMO shooters either).

Some feedback about the recent demos in general. I was personally holding out for the Home demo still, thinking that even if it's another whitebox, it'd be another area where the community can log in and hang out over the holidays. The past four demos have been engine/tech oriented. It makes logical sense to revisit this since the art pass is changing everything and the EM-8ER idea has evolved significantly since the M3 campaign, but it is a little disappointing still not seeing anything new gameplay-wise, especially when in the beginning we were seeing new weapons, abilities, enemy AI, etc.. I'd love to see a return to gameplay focused updates, or added new static models into the build for players to look at (not another chad statue Toshi).

Edit: At 25/12/2021 0446, more information added to Bugs spoiler.
At 29/12/2021 1434, added another issue and images to Bugs spoiler.
At 31/12/2021 1621, added another issue and embedded video to Bugs spoiler.
At 05/01/2022 0613, added a few older issues to the Bugs spoiler. Most of these aren't particularly relevant, but I was here anyway.
At 05/01/2022 2321, broke all the formatting adding two more items to the Bugs spoiler.

 

[PIghead Elderberry]

I like the concept a great deal. It was very entertaining to dig some holes.

I can see that one might be able to dig a fox hole really quick and duck into to to fire from cover against enemies that would take a longer time to blast the fox hole away that it took me to make it, for example.

The idea of having out weapons destroy things is a really good one. I very much enjoy games like that.

If certain damage types and/or weapon types are specific to terrain and object damage, it would make an interesting "build" type one of us players to min/max to that and then be able to smash and mash terrain and objects as part of an organized battle where we would use terrain change and object destruction to our advantage.

I agree it would surely make the AI enemies much more impressive to make them be able to smash and mash everything including terrain.

In the context of thumping, it would add a lot to that if we had to dig out veins of ore with tools or weapons kind of like in Valheim where one digs out copper veins with the pick axe...

Thumbs up. Double greats all around.

 

[punkbuzter#6186]

WAIT, before you fix the terrain bug, you guys need to try and see if you can make it so that players respawn back at base instead of dying once they manage to glitch through terrain!

If people are to spend huge amounts of material and currency on temporary gear it'd be a f*ing bitch if you died from reaching that layer underground, and save someone's hair by "respawning/teleporting" back to base instead of dying at the bottom.

This would be the greatest opportunity to test such features.