The problem with tall grass is that they go right through the buildings. Even this grass is visible for several inches through the barracks floor. But maybe in large open maps, some sections could be made unbuildable and on those I suppose you could have tall grass
Code in removing/hiding detail sprites when a building is placed on top? Not sure if possible though.
Changed it to my own grass texture. I placed 5 grass textures in a row, and used all 5 as a detail sprite to experiment. The downside is those 5 are always on one line and can get repetitive. Another problem is because of the size, on none flat surfaces it'll start floating in the air at one end while being partially underground on the other. This can be improved up to a point but not entirely eradicated. The upside is that I now have 5 times as much grass for the same (maximum) amount of detail sprites. Where the grass is dense, the repetitiveness is obscured by other grass. At the edges it's visible though, but you do see similar things in modern engines. Grass this dense would only be viable with a detail draw distance of at least 6000, or it would look very weird popping up as an island of detail in a circle around you Screenshots: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234836/mapping/canyon/custom_detail_grass 1.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234836/mapping/canyon/custom_detail_grass 2.jpg
I guess yu could have buidable hills/parking lot/space near a farm and the rest be farmlands. I guess it would require to restrict to lvl1 mgs since lvl3s + any vision shenanigans such as forest dont mix at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7yqUWN8oTA One annoying problem remains: grass sprites in the back being drawn as if they're in the front. I'm gonna test this with $alphatest instead of translucent, as that should solve that, however with a drastic decrease in quality according to the wiki. I'm hoping the quality drop will be reasonable though. That video was with detaildraw distance of 7000. Average fps was 220 (it's lower in the video cause I was recording it). Lowest fps I had was 160. Trivia: those are plants from my garden which I photographed