Dynamic terrain polygonization

[kvark]

The terrain is mostly smooth. It would be most efficient to render from any angle if we could polygonize it.
This crate may come handy - https://github.com/PsichiX/density-mesh . It supports providing a height (or a steepness) map. We just need to figure out how to generate one based on the level data.

[PsichiX]

hi! author of the crate here. Could you provide me a file (PNG preferred) with the heightmap data? i could perform optimizations and quality test on that and improve the crate :)

[kvark]

@PsichiX thank you for showing up here!
I'll surely do. The first step is to generate a PNG for it properly. Vangers level data uses a 2.5-layer inteleaved in-house format, so I'll need to make some adjustments to the converter first to process this in the format density-mesh expects.

[PsichiX]

Just published version 1.2 with support for chunks and other optimizations :D

[kvark]

Whoa, that was super quick, greatly appreciated!
I'm excited to try this out, although I may start working on this in a week or so. It's good to know there is a path forward ❤️

[stalkerg]

Nice!
It's was my original idea 5 years ago... ) I hope you reach success.

[kvark]

The closest thing in research that I found is this - https://tildesites.bowdoin.edu/~ltoma/teaching/cs350/spring04/Handouts/scape.pdf
Basically, a modification of Delauney algorithm for height maps. There is a few variations with different trade-offs.