In this thread I will suggest a minor cosmetic change to all the structures in NS.

Giving the buildings a root.

Right now if you build a structure on a ledge or on a relatively steep slope, you can look under the skirts of the building revealing the inmosts secrets of them: They are completely hollow and the inner walls are made out of see-through fabric.

To solve this actually very minor, but yet annoying to the visual prospect problem we could:
Add a few extra polygons consisting of a half-sphere to cover the bottom of buildings (talking chambers that is. Marine structures would maybe have some support bars forming a pyramid instead of an organic half-sphere).

The extra half-sphere would be burrowed in the ground if the structere was placed on flat ground, but if the structure was placed on a ledge you could see some of the half-sphere sticking out of the ledge instead of revealing the embarresing down-upperview sight of the buildings.

This would help chambers to look like they have actually grown into the side of ledges, instead of them looking like they're doing some pretty cool defying of gravity. And Marine buildings would look like they are maybe supported with some metal bars or something.

We're not talking about lots of lots of extra polygons to render. The modeling can be done in an hour or two, so it's not like it's anything huge, but it would still add a real bunch of cool, instead of those bottemless structures and chambers.

Would like to hear opinions, unless they're against the idea, in wich case you should change your opinion and follow lead.

EDIT: Attached an JPG file, showing the effect im talking about. Go ahead and download it, it looks great.

PS: If anyone could host the image, that would be great.

An interesting idea, and i'm sure it's possible, but i know already that these alien structures don't have roots. Their ground isn't permeable, it's a metal plate. You try boring your roots through that.

Besides, the only time i ever see the undersides of the alien structures is when i'm stacking them on top of each other, and i don't see any clear way how to make it look right with the roots you propose.

I think it's fine the way it is, personally.

The alien structure would'nt actaully root into the metal plating. It would'nt even look like that at all. It would look like the chamber is growing not only on top of the ledge but also on the side of the ledge, making it look much more balanced. I'm not solely talking about ledges and edges, i'm also refering to slopes and stacking chambers. Instead of having an bottomless OC floating 10cm over another OC, you would have an OC looking like its actually growing on the other OC.

I would really love to upload a picture i've drawn in paint but i simply don't know how to.

this has already been suggested, and its kinda good, but the 2 main problems are:

1 - you can have only one type of model (performance reasons) of a chamber
2 - spheres would reach through small ledges, bridges i.e. looks plain stupid

NS is still a beta, so while the devs tackle issues like game balance and fun, we'll get around to "making it look pretty" later

Really? I thought it was in it's "More or less Complete" form as it is. Beta 3.0 being the final version, as Chuck and his Krew are moving onto their own game.

and yet....there is still a b5....thats interesting

Interesting theory Lazer, but I don't think so..

As for the idea, I think chambers not as plants persay but as animate objects that can't move. They sit on the ground and just do their jobs..

However, no reason it can't be looked at.

Wow...you are an artist, sir .

Oh, I like the idea, too.

I don't see the bottom sticking out on bridges or thin sections as a problem at all. Remember, all this crap is fungus guys.. if there's even the slightest hole, fungus will grow through it and around it, and mound up into kind of a ball like this thing is. In fact, I've spent a great amount of time and money determining this, even devoting whole sections of my fridge to these experiments.. (Okay.. so I wasn't planning to at the time, but I'm a lousy housekeeper)

And as an added bonus, it makes a nice little warning for marines if they're running under a doorway and happen to see a big ball o' OC bottom hanging just over their heads.

For the marine structures, it's probably not as necessary, since they're not organic to begin with, so perfectly flat bottoms makes much more sense. But I really like the idea for alien structures

Plus, this should be put in just to reward the cartoon. That made me laugh.

The reason why they're hollow is to save on rendering extra polies.

TBH this root thing would eat a lot more FPS than now. Not really good considering how intensive NS already is with the particle system on lower-end machines. A few extra polies could kill. Who knows? They could be 2 polies or 100 polies. We'll never know =/

So in short....just worthless extra load on CPUs. They HAVE to render that part of the model anyway, regardless of being visible or not.

I'm sorry if this offends you, but im pretty sick of people crying about low-end computers every time people mention words like: HL2, porting, 3D, any game more requireing than keen commander.

I'm tired of suffering under other peoples lack of newer hardware.

I mean I'm not talking about coating the innerside of the structures with polygons, adding some shader tech and dynamic realtime shadow rendering or per-poly calculation.
It's a god damn bottom im talking about. It will do in about 10-20 polygons I believe. I think that an OC is already made up of atleast 100 polygons, VERY LEAST.

If your PC is in the end where it can't render about 100 extra polygons without diving under 20 FPS, then it can't be anyone else's than your problem anymore.

Just because some people are crippled, doesn't mean that everyone else wouldn't be allowed to play football, would it?

Of course we shouldn't pimp NS to the point where noone else than people with hardware like me can play it, but it can't be true that we have to lower NS graphics to the level where a god damn 'commodore 64' can go at 100 fps.

Maybe we should just forget about 3D and let people with gameboys join in too, i mean, thats only fair isn't it?