Suggestion - Adjustment to main road visuals

Valoran

Well-known member
May 28, 2020
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Hello again and welcome to my post about roads!

In this post I will be explaining why the current in game roads are slightly illogical in a particular way, and provide suggestions on how to fix this problem.

I have already spoken to Henrik about this topic, and some progress has been made in this area, however one glaring issue still remains, so I figured I would make a post about it to consolidate all information to one place.


Currently in game the main roads look more or less like this:
20200712065502_1.jpg

This is the main road just outside of Fabernum.

The main parts I will draw your attention to are the the two lanes of dirt and the large thick strip of grass running between them.

The problem with this, is that the only thing that produces a track like this is a modern car, with tires on either side, and a large gap in the middle so the grass remains untouched.

We are all familiar with roads that look like this, because we are used to the tracks that cars make.

However, the primary method of transportation in Nave is horses and horse drawn carriages, not cars. As such, we should see tracks that accurately represent what a road would look like if it were being used by horses and carriages for a long time.

The progress in this area that I alluded to at the beginning of this post is the thin carriage wheel lines in the dirt that we can see in the above screenshot.

However, the main issue still remains to be the strip of grass.

The reason why this thick strip of grass is not possible on a road used by horses and carriages, is because the horses hooves would be constantly trampling the grass, making it unable to grow properly.

The reason for this being that the horse is located in the middle of the carriage, between the carriage wheels. Even a carriage drawn by multiple horses will not make a track such as this, as the horses are still position very close to each other in the middle of the wheels, leaving no room for a thick strip of grass to grow.

If there is only one horse, the rider will most likely be riding in the middle of the road, causing the same effect. In either scenario, grass is not able to grow properly in the middle of a road used by horses.



Here are some pictures for reference:

Here are a couple modern examples of roads used by horses.
a-yellow-horse-drawn-carriage-passes-along-a-dirt-road-old-sturbridge-B5W715.jpg
Carriage-Ride-at-Fort-Larned_1.jpg


And here are some very old photographs of main town roads when horses were the main method of transportation in our world before cars took over,

636392876934646882-crimescene.jpg
32660f4832535355016a4d871585322a.jpg
1800-2.jpg
DtvVylKVAAAZaWo.jpg
sunset_gower_1907.jpg


And lastly we have a few pictures from a game that has good roads used by horses, Kingdom Come Deliverance:
maxresdefault.jpg
kingdom-come-deliverance-8.jpg


The main characteristics of a road used by horses and carriages are as follows:

1. Roughed up terrain in the middle of the road as hooves are constantly displacing the dirt, with horse hoof prints very prominently visible in busy areas such as outside large towns.

2. Thin lines either side of the middle, caused by thin carriage wheels leaving tracks in the dirt. ( We now have this )



As such the only change remaining that will make all of our roads accurate is to remove the thick strip of grass in the middle of every main road.

This grass is missing on some roads already, but is heavily featured on all major roads still.

The reason why I believe this should be corrected now rather than later, is if they decide to make all the roads accurate later they will have to retroactively fix all previously made roads.

As we are early in development, it makes more sense to make corrections now and make all future roads accurately.



Thank you for reading my post, I will leave some more pictures in the first comment as I have reached my limit of 10 images here.
 
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Eldrath

Well-known member
Jun 18, 2020
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the Jungle. Meditating on things to come.
Had the exact same thought when I was exploring. Good post!

Honestly taking a good look at kingdom come will help MO2 greatly. When I was playing I was very often thinking "This is how Mortal should look/be". Horse riding was quiet good as well.
 

Valoran

Well-known member
May 28, 2020
363
432
63
Had the exact same thought when I was exploring. Good post!

Honestly taking a good look at kingdom come will help MO2 greatly. When I was playing I was very often thinking "This is how Mortal should look/be". Horse riding was quiet good as well.
I agree, Kingdom Come Deliverance is such a highly polished gem.

There are many aspects that Starvault could draw inspiration from.
 

Xervoz

New member
May 28, 2020
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0
1
Here we can see some more pictures from games that get roads right:

View attachment 157
View attachment 158
View attachment 159

Just to give some info to take into consideration when comparing images with other games, one of the images you show are from red dead redemption 2, a game that was under development for 8 years and over 2000 persons worked on it. I'm not saying you are wrong, I just want them to put the time where it's needed the most and not get stuck on minor things.
 

Valoran

Well-known member
May 28, 2020
363
432
63
Just to give some info to take into consideration when comparing images with other games, one of the images you show are from red dead redemption 2, a game that was under development for 8 years and over 2000 persons worked on it. I'm not saying you are wrong, I just want them to put the time where it's needed the most and not get stuck on minor things.
Although this is obviously true, the reason why it doesn't matter is that the solution requires less effort than what we have in game currently, as the removal of the thick strips of grass is basically all that is needed at this point.