Are there air filled bubbles below a maps water line?

[Crystal Black.8190]

Hi,

While moving through the crucible of eternities aquarium area, the question came up, if you would have you water skills if you could somehow get on the other side. Has anet the tech to create air filled areas below the map wide water line or water areas above it? I can't remember any, but I don't have explored all maps yet.

[Donari.5237]

I would think they do. It might not be the same thing, but look at the mag hammer heart in Sandswept, where there is a chamber in which you can float around via hammer skills. All water does is mark an area where you get swapped to water skills and animations and get a z axis, so they should be able to apply that to any defined volume. Or, conversely, remove that for an air pocket.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Donari.5237 said:All water does is mark an area where you get swapped to water skills and animations and get a z axis, so they should be able to apply that to any defined volume. Or, conversely, remove that for an air pocket.

Where does the information for this implementation detail come from?

[Knighthonor.4061]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Donari.5237 said:All water does is mark an area where you get swapped to water skills and animations and get a z axis, so they should be able to apply that to any defined volume. Or, conversely, remove that for an air pocket.

Where does the information for this implementation detail come from?

I assume it based on other MMOs and their engine

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

I'm not sure that's a safe assumption. "Water" above the maps waterline doesn't actually count as water - the Skimmer shows this. Look at Jahai, the skimmer doesn't get a speed boos when traversing the river above the Rihlon Falls.

[Zephire.8049]

I can't remember the video, but a dev was doing a preview (or maybe an AMA?) and said that because of the age of the engine and how it was originally designed, the only "true" water is below the Z-line. Everything above is just visuals and there's no actual swimming, and below there's no places where you aren't swimming. They could add a pocket of water above or a pocket of air below, but it sounded like that would be a lot of work and they would have to figure out how to make the engine accept that in a timely fashion so they don't bother.

When you see the aquariums in Lion's Arch and Divinity's Reach, for example, that's just a water texture over the glass and fish swimming in the air. If you could get in somehow, you would stand instead of swim.

TL;DR: the water line is hard-coded and there is never water above or air below. It's just visual tricks.

[Donari.5237]

I think I assumed too much based on tech tricks they've pulled. Sorry, should have said "it seems to me" somewhere in there. I'll trust Zephire's memory over my guesses.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

With programming everything is possible. Just not always easy.

And so far Water, in the way that you can swim in it, has always been at one point in a map, which is at the bottom.

[Crystal Black.8190]

@"Zephire.8049" said:I can't remember the video, but a dev was doing a preview (or maybe an AMA?) and said that because of the age of the engine and how it was originally designed, the only "true" water is below the Z-line. Everything above is just visuals and there's no actual swimming, and below there's no places where you aren't swimming. They could add a pocket of water above or a pocket of air below, but it sounded like that would be a lot of work and they would have to figure out how to make the engine accept that in a timely fashion so they don't bother.

When you see the aquariums in Lion's Arch and Divinity's Reach, for example, that's just a water texture over the glass and fish swimming in the air. If you could get in somehow, you would stand instead of swim.

TL;DR: the water line is hard-coded and there is never water above or air below. It's just visual tricks.

Making it possible to have air below the water z-axis or water above seems like a lot of work. If it is ever done it might get integrated with an underwater expansion. Having star wars like water cities would be awesome.

[b k.1648]

It's probably not; just doing the position checks in a different way. But it's certainly easier to set that up while the engine is being developed rather than afterwards.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Its called doing a normal map and using a skybox to simulate being underwater. Don't underestimate the trickery that game developers can use in games, many games that you've played any time in the last four decades have been largely trickery and illusion.

For example, did you know that the Orr mission in Personal Story, where the Pale Tree takes you to visit Cursed Shore, is actually a duplicate of Cursed Shore located between Rata Sum and The Grove, which is why they can't put a real map there.

Anything is possible if you're creative enough, even if the engine doesn't support it.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@Crystal Black.8190 said:Hi,

While moving through the crucible of eternities aquarium area, the question came up, if you would have you water skills if you could somehow get on the other side. Has anet the tech to create air filled areas below the map wide water line or water areas above it? I can't remember any, but I don't have explored all maps yet.

On the other side of the glass in CoE is not actually underwater. It's an optical allusion kind of setup.

With how the maps are made, it doesn't seem like it's possible to have air pockets or water pockets. At least as of Heart of Thorns; The Falls in Auric Basin only has shallow water because the map's water level is very, very low due to the portions of underground Tarir - making The Falls deep enough to get swimmable water would have made it a black pit due to the height.

They'd likely have to make extensive changes to the engine that we'll probably only see when/if we do a proper DSD expansion in the Unending Ocean (as making occasional large pockets of air where folks walk would be a huge benefit to such an expansion).

[Leablo.2651]

@"Hannelore.8153" said:Its called doing a normal map and using a skybox to simulate being underwater. Don't underestimate the trickery that game developers can use in games, many games that you've played any time in the last four decades have been largely trickery and illusion.

For example, did you know that the Orr mission in Personal Story, where the Pale Tree takes you to visit Cursed Shore, is actually a duplicate of Cursed Shore located between Rata Sum and The Grove, which is why they can't put a real map there.

This isn't true. You can see from the API that the story map's coordinate origin is overlaid on the Grove (where the "vision" is started from). So firstly, overlapping the coordinate space of maps doesn't matter since it's already being done. The actual illusion here is the idea that there is a unified world and that individual maps exist and take up space within it. In reality, each map and its story variants (which are different maps) are disconnected pocket universes, and there are actually dozens of them overlapping each other in the game.