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Pixel Perfect and I were hashing out some issues in DarkGDK concerning what is neceaary to get that "Perect Scene" - both a combination of "Tools" and settings etc.

So I'm basically hoping we can use this thread as a continuation of the "Best Technique" ramblings here. Why? Because alot of the same "Settings" and "tool created media" just doesn't look/act the same in DarkGDK as it does with DBPro - So - this is the issue.

Case and Point: Fog doesn't always work quite the same or look quite the same in GDK. That's for me anyway - More "BINARY" than FOGGISH. Not as gradual as I would like for a given Rage near and far and a color of choice. Just different, that's all.

The first thing Pixel Perfect and I wanted to discuss was T.Ed. and how it can be used for DarkGDK.

What's nice about T.Ed 3 is its simply awesome for "Controlled" Sized Terrains - and MORE - but not HUGE terrains. It has pretty cool interface for painting alpha and color maps - but unfortunately - it was written for BlitzBasic - and I don't have any idea how to get the 3DWS like alpha mappinging into GDK from the files that I can export. What I DO is export "MESH TILES" with the SuperTexture option on and this utility basically blends the various alpha layers into one texture it drapes over the mesh. Not as gorgeous as AlphaMapping can be - but Quite handsome nonetheless.

Another thing that I've come to realize is that nothing is quite as fast as the Terrain System in GDK. It has a flawless limb culling, its quite good-n-fast, smooths things etc - so it ultimately is a good canidate for large terrains.

The bummer for me is that I have to decide on perfect DOT control or the larger terrains where I can get the FPS and depth I want.

I'm going to see next if I can't "TILE" Advanced (or simply Terrain in GDK) using the T.Ed. output. ... Ahh... the quiest for the perfect Scene!

Another shot - using GDK Terrain

Thanks Jason for kicking this off. Hopefully we can start to build an idea in this thread of what the strengths and weaknesses are of the various level design tools and methodologies used by people to build their game worlds in GDK.

I am pretty new to all of this and although I have approached it with a very open mind I have found that the number of areas in which we all need to be fairly proficient is huge:

Game Engine design
3D Modelling
Animation Techniques
Terrain and World Design
Texture Design
Plot or Story Design

to name but a few!

The tools we have at our disposal and the ability to integrate their output into GDK and our games really determines the end quality of our efforts.

I like many of us in this forum have encountered problems which have at times been both really frustrating and time consuming but through perseverance and help from others have overcome those obstacles or found alternative ways of achieving the desired goals.

The biggest problem facing most of us starting out as game designers is the lack of knowledge we have initially and the seemingly huge challenge of assembling all this. I have found this forum immensely helpful and inspiring and believe that threads that collate this sort of knowledge are worth their weight in gold.

So if you feel you can contribute, be it telling us about your favourite tool or maybe a trick you have found to make something work where others have struggled, then feel free to do so. We all benefit from shared knowledge and our achievements will be all the greater for it.

How about some more feedback on T-Ed to start with, or any other terrain / level designer!

About just that - I did a preliminary test and found that I can get a Seamless GDK Terrain Tile system Going using the T.Ed. Height Map Export but it won't be easy.

The exported Height map is not really an even numbered Bitmap (Which By the Way I have to convert to GrayScale (24bit) with "MacroMedia FireWorks" before I can use it in GDK)) Anyways.. I think this is because for a "4 tile T.Ed." Landscape, the Seam Lines are not exported - not twice anyways - I think I may have to devise a Way to "Copy" the Seams and double them up some how because GDK terrain requires even numbered bitmaps. I have to do this more complex seam thing otherwise the "TEXTURES" won't likely line up how I would want.

My first test showed that it could work - I was able to get a seamless set of tiles - just two - just a test - but by doubling the Seam Edges so they matched (Right Edge of one tile matching identically the Left Edge of the second tile where these two tiles intersect) it lined up dead on - I also used the dbObjectSizeX(id) function to determine exactly how far to move it. Note I didn't scale it - and this MIGHT through off the "Accuracy and apparent seamless connect.

@Pixel - I do hope others will share their techniques - or at least acknowledge they are reading these so I continue to use this for popping in those strange and unusual (usually hours spent to learn) those "Sweet Spot" Settings (texture flags etc) and other stuff - like how to crank out GDK friendly media for this or that etc.

Great information Jason, and yes .. I'm hoping for as wide as possible contribution from people on here. No one person's project is exactly alike so most people probably have unique information and experience they can share.

I will post something on here fairly soon on my experiences with 3D World Studio, I'm just holding back till I have investigated the DBO file export in a bit more detail as I know this is something you are interested in.

Getting back to T.Ed and your experience of it, I have read that it's possible to export alpha vertex information into the X file format it produces. Have you tried this and is GDK able to use this information natively?

I tried using something similar to what I believe T.Ed's super texture is with 3DWS, where I produced a single texture map with distributed textures built from a height map of the terrain exported from 3DWS. However, I could not get it to UV map this on to the terrain successfully. I did get some quite interesting generic terrain texture effects though.

I guess with T.Ed producing the super texture it's self it maps perfectly. Do you loose information or resolution with the super texture technique though, as I would imagine if they didn't reduce the resolution the super texture file would be massive!

I also noticed that seemingly it can produce overhangs in the terrain and vertical faces which sounds neat. Guess overhangs would prove impossible to export via a height map though!

I May Buy it if you get that alpha figured out!

I've been on the DGRafix forum - and frankly the guy doesn't know DBPro well - but he knows terrain obviously well. The export he wrote with Vertex alpha etc. does drop quite a bit of info - but how to tie it together I have no idea.

I do get a Direct.X file with (assumed) Layers Textures. It uses the textures I painted with a looks like a collage of SQUARES. I think the alpha and color maps are so you can programmatically (How would you do this in GDK?) color each vertext according to the color map, and adjust the transparency of each vertex with the alpha map - AND there are supposedly 7 layers, Base, 2,3,4,5,6,7. In the editor the author desribes it at 7 Meshes stacked - where only the bottom one is "Alpha 100%" and the other depend on what you "Texture" with, and "Color With" and the more you PAINT a certain spot the more opaque it gets.

The dynamic "Kit" does half of what it says - but its suppose to kick out texture tiles as well - and says they are in some other folder - I never can find em. SO to do the SAME thing, I Export Tiles, Direct-X with Super Texture, and export the height map - BUT this is my HUGE lanscape strategy to use GDK Terrain (The Detail texture" is alpha and repeated over the whole thing, limb culling for speed yada yada.

The problem I'm up against now is if you make a 64 vertice per tile, 9x9 "Terrain" And Export it, you get a height map of 192x192 right? Wrong. You get 190x190. I know this has to do with "Sharing" a seam so they line up - But GDK chokes if its not Dead on 64x64, 128x128 etc. I Could cheat, crop the document to "kinda Work" but the paint won't line up. I also Don't know Which way the guy has the "Recycled Seam". Is It the top row, and Right for each tile? Bottom Row and LEft?

The algorythm is probably trivial but I don't look forward to writing a ton of test DBpro apps just to see how best to get tiled and seamless - but I think I will have to and I think this will involve a tricky method to tie it all together - like perhaps a program that loads the height map, you tell it the dimensions, then it out puts tiles that will WORK decently for this method.

Where this gets worse - is what resolution for the supertexture do you give it per tile? Probably the Even number - but will it line up 100%? Ahh - the frustration.

Another Way - Softer with drawback of detail would be scrape the whole tile the huge terrain thing, make a big 8x8 grid in Ted, Export the heightmap, doctor the height bitmap so its a power of 2, and then have one super texture... that is more or less stretch... but so much for detailed painted on roads and the like... one dot would be the size of a football field! This also means no Shadows - except those from the built in GDK Terrain - and aiming the sun the way they do is a bit tough to line up with a given skybox... which may have a sun drawn on it or brighter clouds than the rest etc.

One of the benefits of T.Ed. is you can place a object on the terrain, scaled how you want, specify if it casts a show, filters...like transparent (tree) or not etc... and then it does the light rendering. Not like a PIXAR movie like Shrek or something but beats trying to use that dumb shadow shader that is only good if you have a near empty scene - that is .. for instance a man in a room with a lamp versus what I'm trying to do outdoors.

I seriously think Good Terrain is harder than the game stuff - with the exception of maybe AI. The game you tweak each detail - and once you have it you move forward. the Terrain is just as much alive - Camera, light, ambiance, Objects need to kinda have settings that "Jive" so you get a certain "atmosphere" - Fog needs to be set so it doesn't wash everything - but gives the depth you want - all while avoiding the cam range "CutOff" which sometimes I say - Oh Well - You see its a video game ALSO the other challenge I'm up against is Water Z-Fighting Sometimes - and Ultimately - Getting that ONE terrain - GREAT - AWESOME! Good For You! Do you have the "Method" Down well enopugh to crank out another one? Ah Ha!!! There lies a challenge all its own! To come up with a series of steps that WORK everytime so you can recreate, create new, do again, make level2, make a new version, reuse the engine whatever

Ok - Enough rambling I have more fighting to do - ... with not so Pixel Perfect Pixels! (Sorry Couldn't resist )

Well - tiling in GDK - using the Terrain system - was a waste of time. Works in DBPro - not GDK - The New Terrain system has its own ID system and doesn't equate to an Object like in DBPro - so you can't do Object commands - and this includes Positioning the tiles. You CAN do this in DBPro - not in DarkGDK - This stinks. I guess I'm limited to ONE texture STRETCHED across my many miles accross island. This totally %^@%$232352 stinks.



[edit] THIS IS NOT TRUE - I WAS WRONG - GDK TERRAIN works like DBPRO Advanced Terrain[/edit]

I have been trying tiling in GDK but only with small landscape. Im trying to rewrite a tool from DBPro to GDK.NET where I can take a huge bitmap and convert it to tiles.

good thread J... i'll be looking at terrains in a few days, and the discussion here will definitely help...

thx...

--Mike

Welcome Guys! Anyway - I have a snippet that belongs in DarkBasic Side. HEre is what it is - Very Specific - Ted3 - as I posted above - saves a heightmap in odd number format - meaning - if you have 4 tiles 64x64, it doesn't save 128x128, it saves 127x127 because the Seam is shared. Well -this doesn't work well for trying to make DarkBasic Style Tiles because Advanced Terrain requires even (2's compliment) like 2,4,8,16,32 etc. e.g. 32x32 or whatever for heightmap and I think texture too ... but this germain to the heightmap. I did this FOR GDK BUT You can't (AFAIK) tile them because you can't position them - so the ability to have more than one at this poitn confuses me... (They use different Object Numbers I've hashed on other threads and that seems to be how it is.)

Anyway - here is a snip that takes a heightmap bitmap (24bit) gray or color - Though Advanced Terrina likes Gray colored 24bit "Color" bitmaps if that makes sense - anyways - it slices how you need and creates the tiles for you with the seams in the right places so they adjoin perfectly.



Just name your height map , creatively, "heightmap.bmp" and run this snip in the same dir. You'll get tiles numbered in the funny scheme that T.Ed uses so it makes sense to Ted Users when they see their files. T.Ed Numbers tiles starting at bottom left, going right, then "Up" to row 2. so (1,1) (2,1) (3,1) ...Lowest Row, then up to second row would be (1,2) (2,2) (3,2). So I made the filenames match - nuff said

I currently think I found the best solution to use T.Ed and advanced terrain. Make a Huge T.Ed. File 8x8 tiles, 64x64 verts, and then height it, color it, then make the "SuperTexture" tiles small - say 256x256 so I don't blow up my humble vid card's ram.

Alpha Mapping seems so much more efficient as you can recycle a texture everywhere, hardly using ram versus loading 12+megs of texture to cover one tile - with many color repeats - etc.

This isn't perfect - btw - and it will take alot of compile - run - hmm... go back change the Terrain scalling x, y, z and water height until I get it where it needs to be. Also, the other drawback to this - is Z-Fighting.

See, with the Mesh "Tiles" I can get pretty specific about the angle of the terrain where it hits the water to minimize zfighting - with Large terrain - it takes your height map - then "Creates" a Mesh of its own based on it - and I think it makes a LOD version and closeup version (High & Low Poly) in addition to its limb/Culling system - which is the best I've seen on that note. Every time I try to make a culling routine - either the OnScreen function in GDK doesn't work right - or it works when can is facing north say, but not when its facing south. Strange? I Know. Now I'm pretty happy abouot the T.Ed. I made where I was loading the meshes etc - they look hot - but they simply aren't "Big enough" to get the types of scenes I'm after - like the Apache Helicopter flying over the water. It just looks less cartoony and it looks really Big versus - "Cool" But very RPG'ish. Perfect for the Still Shots, a bit "angly" (not to smooth) for what I'm trying to do - if I add more polys, using Ted to get that really smooth look - well - FPS tanks.

I have been looking at that A3d poly reducer tool or whatever sold here on the Game Creators. I haven't totally given up on meshs - but for now - I'm going to try and find a Sweet Spot between TED and GDK Terrain (One Really Big Tile in GDK Terrain, 8x8tiles x 64x64 verts). This gives me a height map of 505x505 (Seams ..remember)- but for one tile - I just resize it to 512x512.

I COULD Squeeze more HeightMap Res by Doubling its resolution to 1024x1024, bringing it into GeoScape3d, and then smoothing it and then exporting the map again - and I may do this. Ultimately - I'm sick of fighting with it - I just want a "Tool" that allows me to draw however I want - with whatever "Rules" I must follow - so that no matter what I create - it loads and plays fast and looks good. I know that is alot to ask.

Honestly - the culling I was talking about before - I found the Distance function (Vector math) less than perfect. But the jury is still out on this - but for certain - ObjectInScreen is hosed and that seems like a CRITICAL function to me for making culling systems. Why should I have to write something that GDK and the Video Card Already know? Meaning - Why should I (we) have to write match algorythms for ffrustrum or onscreen culling when the library knows the FOV, the Camera "ViewPort", the Camera Range, etc. This is quite annoying - and if only the Object Inscreen works as described ... all the time... then I think we could bring framerates to new highs and levels of 60fps smoothness

Just my ramblings.... I'll stay in touch on how this ted idea works out for - using GDK Terrain - again - its the painting and tools I like - and not Ted's fault about how DarkGDK doesn't allow tiling "Terrain" only meshes.

Jason P Sage

@Niels Henriksen - Tiling Meshes or "Advanced" terrain? (Built in Terrain system?)

Great information again Jason. I'm really shocked though at your revelation that GDK has no Advanced Terrain capability! I've not needed to play around with the terrain commands yet as I've been importing terrains from 3DWS but I had assumed it was all there.

Can anyone confirm if GDK.Net has Advanced Terrain like DBPro?

OH Pixel, It HAS it ... but the DRAWBACK is that its not an OBJECT! That is the problem.
[edit] THIS IS NOT TRUE - I WAS WRONG - GDK TERRAIN works like DBPRO Advanced Terrain[/edit]

Example - I CAN USE GDK to make a "Advanced Terrain". And I CAN ask it for Ground Height. In theory you can make more than one BUT the ID's aren't OBJECt ID's... so you can do object stuff - like "Positioning them" - just scale etc. I Hope someone says "Jason Do this" but until then - I can only have ONE terrain.

You See, in DarkBasic - I could have many and position them with the "Object position TerrainId, x,y,z" and because terrain (Advanced terrain) was effectively an Object - I could do stuff like that - stuff like OBJECT SIZE X(MyTerrainID) etc. Not in GDK to my knowledge.

Correct me if I'm wrong Jason but I thought that this was inherently the major difference between the original terrain in DBPro and Advanced terrain. The introduction from my Advanced Terrain help file states the following:

'This expansion pack provides commands that allow you to create terrains using heightmaps. When created the terrain can be treated like any other 3D object within Dark Basic Professional. Commands found in the Basic3D command set can also be used on terrain objects.'

Yup. And I think DarkGDK has the "Former" setup. MEaning - It comes with "Terrain" (Which looks like advanced yada yada) Bu tthere isn't truly an advanced Terrain addon - THEREFORE - You can't move em around like DBPro Advanced Terrain. It really seems to be the ame system under the hood - regardless... I'm hoping you CORRECT ME about this!

Basically - Terrain is Terrain - Objects are Objects. This is what stinks.
[edit] THIS IS NOT TRUE - I WAS WRONG - GDK TERRAIN works like DBPRO Advanced Terrain[/edit]

In DBPro - Their "Terrain" stunk I'm told. So then they added - Advanced Terrains - and THEY DO act like objects, same id's, you can position them etc. Unfortuantely - I grew accustomed to this. After all the DarkGDK "Terrain" looks identical. But - Objects are object and the Terain is Terrain in GDK - no way to position them that I'm aware of.

Can someone make a GDK app with TWO "Terrains" in the same view - not touching so we can be sure - no objects loaded? Positioned? If so - I may go back to the Tiled "Terrain. You See - the Terrain does have awesome auto culling - you call "Update Terrain" and it handles it. TRying to do this with meshes - well - hope people are having better luck than me

Guys, correct if I'm wrong, but from my searchs throught the forum, the Advanced Terrain is a plugin (no originally included with DBPro), so as with any plugin, it is not available for DGDK if it is not previously converted to work with it.

Thiago

Yes kBessa, this is true. But the reason that most of the plugins for DBPro are plugins is because The Game Creators wanted to add additional functionality but have people pay for it. So producing DLL based plugins is a nice modular form of building functionality. Great for third party providers too!

From what I've read so far, most of the plugins they have released themselves are actually coded in C or C++ and just use a special interface to allow DBPro access to their DLL functions.

Seeing that The Game Creators had taken the decision to release Advanced Terrain free of charge to existing DBPro users from, I think it was, 5.8 onwards I guess us C++ users were assuming that it was now included in GDK too, which wouldn't require a plugin just the inclusion of the original coded functions.

Looks like this might need to go on 'The Wish List' or is genuinely a bug in GDK. Perhaps a response from TGC themselves might be appropriate to clarify this.

jason p sage - I will use dbo's (so far) for the terrain. I have some DBPro code that can take a hightmap and texturemap and create a dbo file of it.

Cool Neils. You know what is funny - I'm currently trying to find the best way to do just the opposite.

Make a Direct-X Mesh, and have "Ground" painting or just normal texturing tools - so I can paint it - (By Ground Painting I mean paint everywhere this angle range and height this etc) so I get it how I bascially want it - pretty detailed - and then export the heightmap and the GDK "Terrain" singel texture.

Everytool I try is missing one component to make an easy way to get desired terrain for GDK Terrain system - and object placement.

I'm thinking about just making something - a complete last resort - but I may have to.

There are three things I need to be able to do: Form the terrain, Paint it, and place objects in /on it. When you make a heightmap then load it in GDK Terrain - its not EXACTLY what you thought - proportions are almost perfect - but the whole scaling thing is kind of a iterative process to make it get close to how it was in the designer. Then you have the Z Fighting - that you may not have seen in the original editor you used to make the heightmap - so now therer isn't and easy way to adjust it - I'm trying various "procedures" to do this - but I've yet to nail down the perfect scenario. However, on my web site, in the gallery - the latest shot shows GDK Terrain looking decent - so I know it'll probably be worth it.. but it's defintely not "Load Editor - make terrain, load in game - whella!" unfortunately.

Neils, How many polys are you using with those DBO terrains and are you trying to cover as much distance as I am or no?

Jason ... thought you might be interested in these:

T.Ed version 6.1 supports alpha blended terrain export to .dbo format as detailed below:

Release 6.1 ADDED - DBO export with both vertex alpha and supertexture options


Also found this whilst searching the forum:

DaveC9000 has posted code for converting a loaded T.Ed alpha vertex .X format file internally within DBPro so that the alpha blended terrain can be displayed. Link below

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=94380&b=1

WOW - YEAH I'm interested - and THANX - That does add to the possibilities. Maybe my Ted Loader will be the final contestant - now if I could get culling - I think we're on to something - Oh - did I mention I grabbed 3dws builder edition? Thought you'd be proud

Just like Cart4 - but way better from what I can tell.

Now I'm wondering if I make a big terrain, tiled, exported with alpha, at the max size, and then poly reduce the tiles (for far away)

I wonder if I could make a a cheap (WYSIWYG) Terrain engine for ted. Hmm. T.Ed. is definately more colorful.

GDK Terrain - though I like the limb culling action and the "huge" look I can get like in the screen shot I posted above.

Van B showed me a cool "Shader" that Green Gandalf did - basically you give a few textures and depending on angle of ground - or the shader's mask only - I forget... only the appropriate shader shows through - this definatey is interesting ... if that shader runs quickly - definately worth checking out. I do not know or understand all the details and I haven't run it on a vid card with shader support yet.

Well thanx - now to find out how to download Ted 6, last time I tried to look I couldn't find it.

[edit]Yup - right there - released now - I had trouble finding beta. I emailed him already for a key - and I did again today - I hope Dan gets back to me soon.

You Know - I was thinking and I'm surprized noone has made a tool that just loads a terrain mesh, chops its into Tiles, and makes the low poly and high poly in memory - and makes a little DLL we can call to make it work - like the Advanced Terrain add on to DbPro?!?! Maybe I should look into that. Going to search if there is such a thing - like a DLL or something 3rd party just a terrain engine. They are complex enough to warrant it.
[/edit]

Congratulations Jason, 3DWS is a serious game world/level designer; the more I use it the more impressed I am with it. The large poly problems associated with large static terrain meshes can be partly overcome with culling as you rightly suggest. This is where Lost In Thought's frustum culling (at limb level) really comes in ... I must start working on porting that code to C++.

My favourite feature is 3DWS though has to be the User Definable Entities. Place them any where in your world with the data you need to implement anything in real time within your game be it placeholders for sounds or enemies or triggers for scripted sequences etc.

With regard to shaders, Green Gandalf seems to be the man with the finger on the pulse, I am coming across more and more people using his shaders to great effect!

Back to T.Ed, I'm seriously considering buying a copy as I like the terrain painting facilities it seems to offer.

Link to T.Ed site:

http://www.d-grafix.com/?page=ted

Thanks Bro! I like the interface quite a bit actually - its like Cartography4 but improved!

I found a better Game Engine! Has built in LOD Terrain - just what I want!!! With the low Sticker Price of only $350,000 (The same one used by Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell!) Woo Hoo... Bzzzz. Alarm Clock went off - musta been dreaming

Seriously - I've been searching - and there is that guy who documented his entire terrain engine as he made it from scratch in C++ (Over the course of 6months I think he said). That might be some code worth examining. Has poly reduction code in it - like poly reducing etc. also does "triangle-fans" where possible to speed rendering. this might require direct DirectX API calls posibly to be efficient. I know he mentions tiles - so rather than getting one big "Stutter" every few frames - he does updates a tile at a time or something... will go back perhaps and look.

I think a cool DarkGDK engine would be able to take a terrain, mesh or heightmap, chop it up, make high/low poly versions of each chunk - and would handle the correct display like the way Advanced Terrain works in DBPro. Even better would be the ability to take Ted tiled Meshes for example, with all the alpha info etc... the texturing also. That would sweeten the deal.

I'm gonna look at Green Gandalf's shader soon now I have a vid card avail with shader support...

This idea of a Auto "Chunker" LOD system would be great for ALL 3DWS stuff as well. I get the impression from various posts that BSP just isn't what its cracked up to be in DBPro and DarkGDK - so I wonder if I should never even bother learning what that may offer. Defiantely seems more indoor... At least portal Occlusion does... and I think if done right - portal occlusion could work for terrains.. if a Poly is blocked - don't bother kinda thing. That might be to much overhead - dunno...

But for a huge 3DWS - It seems some sort of "Chunking" the scene could be useful. I guess you could kinda do that with the objects - and the custom inffo I'm told you can enter - so rather than going for the SINGLE MESH - make your scene out of a rton of objects, and then make you code smartenough to KNOW the REAL model that was loaded - so it can also load the low poly verion and treat accordingly to culling and LOD.

Which brings me to ANOTHER (Probably Easy if you think about it) idea. Modular MAP Building. If you could build two maps and adjoin the terrain seamlessly - that might work as a cool "FPS" tiling system... but at a bare minimum... Think about T.Ed for a sec - with the TILES of meshes. Great - you made a terrain. what would it take to make 3 more of them and then get the Seams to "smooth" together. Vertice? Can you Weld Vertices in DarkGdk? This would allow getting past the "Max Size" for a given Terrain.

Sorry to seemingly digress so much - but I opersonally do not want to spend 6 months just getting the Terrain lookking good. I'd like to be in a modeller drawing - or coding menu's, making AI or integrating some AI tool - may TGC will have thiers ready soon - I want physics - nto sure I'm going to use a physics engine or not - but as much as I love this terrain stuff - the more I get into it - the more it seems there is no Perfect way to get fast - huge - beutiful terrains. You have to pick 2 of those qualities and run with it. I haven't given up - and I love this thread! (I love the others too - who am I kidding )

so - for now - time is limited a susual - I'm going to see if I can understand that "Turning on" the alphamapping code for Ted5 - written in DBpro and apply it to DarkGDK (don't have 6.1 ted license yet) Perhaps the Frame rates will go up due to less memory being used by textures - perhaps they will go down - because Alpha Mapping is possibly a Frate Rate Dog. Aplha Level on a plain can slow things - can't imagine alpha mapping having no negative speed sideeffects - but hey - don't know until you try! Good Day all.

Sorry for double post - but I just tried that Ted 5.5 Direct X to Layer1 and Layer2 DBO files so you can see the alpha mapping. Some very effective code - teraing up limbs etc etc. But, I got Zfighting - looked awful. you see the lower map bleeding through - like water always seems to (depending on normal or angle or whatever you call it - where the water plain hits the terrain)

The author DID a good job and it works. BUT YOU MUST position the Layer2 a hair lower on Y Plane. Just enough to stop the Zfighting thing from happening. NOTE if its to high - looks like your vision is messed up - or like a Toy train set Terrain wrapped in hard molded clear plastic )

Seriously - seems to render fast enough - My Next test (this was a DBPro Test) is to modify my DarkGDK code to load this type of Object if the EPR has "ALPHADBO" in the custom area of the inits section. this way I don't have to worry about changing file names - it just will know.

This is modified version of DaveC9000's Code to convert a Ted Direct.X object into two DBO's - one for the top layer alpha, and the base layer.

The difference (what I added) Was the ability to use it for both Single and Tiled Terrains. Nothing fancy - but Easier to use.

Sorry for mult posts - only cuz I'm slamming on it..

I've been hammering at this. Using this little DBPro Clip:

(above loads one model/terrain. the GDK does load tiles - I was testing you know figured try it)

Anyway - I must have an issue because DBP Pro should not get higher frame rates, can't just be the skybox and huge game range in DarkGDK could it? Anyway

DBPRO Example - (Not to shabby)

The DarkGDK one is VERY depressing - same as DBPro settings - all shaders of... ends up see through. Not unlike 3dws issues kinda that Pixel Perfect was having with transparent trees

Dark GDK Example? Bad. Makes me think DarkGDK has an Alpha flaw - notice how you can see through the mountain?



[edit]Where did every one go? Hope the big detailed posts didn't scare ya offf... Pixel Perfect? You still cracking at this culling business?[/edit]

Yep .. still here Jason. Been a bit busy that’s all

Well I shelled out for T.Ed version 6.1 (not that it's expensive) and I must say I'm really pleased with it. It's an impressive terrain designer from what I've seen so far.

Anyhow, with regard to the .dbo file export (which appears to be un-documented presently). Initially I was getting very similar effects to Jason where the terrain seemed to be translucent showing anything behind it, however through trial an error I have found a combination of settings that appears to work as follows:

The export produces two output files of the form:

filename_teda.dbo and
filename_tedb.dbo

Load the files as follows and you get a perfect solid alpha mapped terrain:

dbLoadObject("filename_tedb.dbo",1);
dbLoadObject("filename_teda.dbo",2);
dbSetObjectTransparency(1,0);
dbSetObjectTransparency(2,1);
dbSetObjectLight(1,0);
dbSetObjectLight(2,0);

Note: It’s important to load the files in this order, loading the other way round looses the full alpha blended texture effect!

Currently I am not getting any meshes displaying on my terrain and am unsure, until I have had a chance to check this out, as to whether they are simply not exported or I still have some work to do! Also, I have yet to display the lightmaps but they are exported, so be it, in a series of tiles.

Example of T.Ed landscape in GDK below ....

Excellent WORK BRO! Glad you're back. Pic looks Great!



You have to make a parser for the EPR file. That's what I did - took awhile to get perfect. Note: I'm working on some big tiled terrains and occasionally get Direct X file errors. Sometimes you can use a decent text editor (not notepad - to slow) to search-n-replace "NaN" with "0" (Without the quotes - those are there just so you know what I mean)

also the "Infinity" and "-Infinity" sometimes appear. I was very discouraged about this - but the author has heard my pleas for help and has already responded showing a genuine interest in getting little quirks ironed out! This is good news.


Yeah - I actually like the EPR file now that I wrote the parser - I can put in information in the Custom section - like I have the INITS SECTION set up so I can add clouads, how many, colors to use for different layers, I can make the Water shader I'm using now get its color info from different locations - say to match Skybox themes etc. I'd be happy to toss ya some code if it'll help - though I warn ya - I made my own double linked lists and I type cast alot to prevent to many "Stub routines" and stuff. All for the sake of speed - that's one of my goals anyways... not always successful

So I'm also talking to Visigoth - and examining his satelite imagery code to see if I can use that. Also, while on the U.S. Seamless Satelite imagry site - I saw they have FOLLIAGE information! I was thinkning about making canaopies versus trying to have a million trees - how cool would that be to have satelite "Folliage" cover overlaid on the map - allowing tanks and soldgers to hide from the heli's more successfully - to even the score !!!

Well - forums been quiet today - and I've actually had a very SLOW day wrestling with some TED "Bugs" - messing with DarkBasic's advanced terrain and a heightmap/texture generator I have called GeoScape - basically looking at a lot of different things. I have Lost In thought's Frustrum code in DarkBasic sitting here - and One of us probably needs to port that baby

Well until next time - BTW thanx for the PROPER file loading order for the Alpah mapped stuff. I WILL implement that as soon as I click Send because I want to see it

Sorry - I don't do this to bump the thread - I came back with happy info and the double post assures you get a email

Your code worked great! (I did manage to get something similiar in DBPro - with the home brew version of how he makes the exported DBO's now but ... YOU nailed WHY/HOW it works or doesnt - load order, trans flag and light! Great Job!

Here is a snap of my first test - don't let the FPS scare ya - This alpha solution gives us not quite - but close to - double poly.

Note - I have a snag for this - might not bother you but - as part of the need (I feel) for a LOD solution - for better frame rates I need to be able to reduce the Poly. So I bought Action3d Poly Reducer. This means I have to use my own Direct.X to DBO Layer 1 and layer 2 converter - which hopefuly works. I figure the process will be:

1: Export Vertext alpha as Direct x -

2: reduce polys

3: Use Direct.X alpha to dual dbo file converter util - but I hope the DBO converter thing works because it separates the alpha and solid layers and then saves as two objects - but it also assumes a certain direct.x structure and the poly reducer may mess that up....

Anyway - I'm off to try it

[edit] This process doesn't work - Reducing Poly hosed it bad. Must screw up the mesh "order" and the DBO converter doesn't split the layers right or something.

T.Ed. Regular Direct.X Supertexture export is hosed - so I can't do that either - trust me - I've been trying The authoer - like I said earlier is looking into some of the stuff I reported - hopefuly there is a fix sooner than later. I was hoping to be working on a LOD system and Folliage - Yeah Right. [/edit]

lol keep going J ... I'm sure you'll get there

Meanwhile, I have managed to get the model meshes from the T.Ed scene to load. Needed to offset the x and z positions to get it to line up with the exported .dbo terrain but its now looking great ... apart from an interesting problem with the trees which appear to be rotated by 90 degrees lol. See pic below.

Looks like a problem with the .X export, otherwise its looking quite promising. Like you Jason I'm looking at Lost In Thought's native T.Ed file loader as an alternative way of achieving the same thing and more. I see he's also a good way into a native loader for the 3D World Studio file format. He always seems to be the man 'out in front' hitting all these key areas. Pity that Josh is reporting that no one else seems to be interested in working with the 3DWS format which along with a few other issues seems to have paused development of his next gen level designer!

I don't give up to easy ...

Keep in mind - that Ted is written in BlitzBasic - and certain things like rotation are skewed. Like the EPR file format saves that last Camera postion - so you can "Start" at a given view - very neat - My Loader works - but the rotation it 90 degress wrong on yaxis - never tried to fix - but I'll hack at it.

LIT (Lost in thought wrote the first T.Ed. Loader?) Hmm.. I used it as a guide on how to turn the EPR data into usuable DBpro/DarkGDK info. Eventually - being in DarkGDK and all - I made classes for the different sections etc. Works decent - when the Export Direct.X files are ok. The DBO does ok now you found the sweet spot for alpha - but still double poly - reducing still kinda bad with Action3d - though the Author managed to do it where the alpha is unchanged - bah - Just give me supertexture - can't seem to get light map working anyother way

3dws - My personal "NOT ANOTHER ONE" reaction to seeing there is a 3dws native format was simply because I'm still baning at the finishing touches of my ted loader - as described - hosed direct x etc. For me - I definately See the value of the "Native" formats - you can make whole level editors out of existing programs if you take the time to write a loader - and then a set of your own "ways" to deal with certain things - like object placement, sound placement - or whatever - I like the Water, SkyBox, and Cloud options I have in the ted loader - I can take any EPR and decide the "Time of day" (via skybox), make the water shader color scheme match (currently 70+ variations all set to go) and decide how many wispy clouds are flying overhead - their colors etc. I probably said this already but its just so hot to see it when its all worjking together.


The Satelite info - Visigoth did - cool - I'm currently writing my own - just a little parser - maybe make heightmaps or something - he DID AWESOME - I'm just trying to make sure I really get it. So far - if you grab the "Grid Float" NED format - from the http://seamless.usgs.gov/ site - need to click "Modify download" once you get there - and select NED - GridFlaot format - you get variouos files - but HDR has the "Rows x Cols" and then the flt file is just a binary file of "Y" (heights). I may try a collage of stuff - like get my own "Height Map tiles" load em in TED - save direct x meshs - color em - then LOD them - then use 3dws for the buildings - perhaps the frustrum culling stuff both "Inside" 3dws buildings" AND "running around in the terrain" who knows....

I'll get there... not enough weekends in a month How abou thtme Red Sox!

All sounding good Jason ... and I know what you mean about the weekends. If I was doing this full time I'd still not have enough time lol.

Anyway, I'm starting two weeks holiday and will be quiet for a while as I need to devote a bit more time to the family. Keep up the good work. I'll be back

Pity this thread hasn't encouraged more people to contribute, maybe most on here already have stable development systems and methodologies, still would have been nice to hear about them though! I dream of the day when the only task I have is putting the game together.

I dont contribute to this thread becuase I dont have so much to contribute with . But I was reading everything

That's ok Niels. I know Jason and I have benefited from it and hopefully others too. I wouldn't have got anywhere near where I am currently without the help from this forum!

@Niels Henriksen - Thanx for piping up. I for one will keep this going if I can with Pixel Perfect's help and others.

@Pixel Perfect - You'll be missed my friend - look forward to your return

Topic Stuff: Level Design, Editors, Techniques, Cam Settings, FOV - Get that Perfect "Look"

Level Design - On going discussion - the odds are against for certain kinds of landscapes. This thread is an ongoing discussion of just how some of these things can be conquered - but the war is still on - haven't got this licked yet.

Editors - Good reports about 3DWS - Has a powerful export "Native" format - but its binary - and you need to study the record structure to read it properly from what I can tell. This can take much more effort initially for some but the benefits will probably be worth it if you're seriously into this whole game making business. Pixel Perfect mentioned that Lost In Thought (LIT) has been hammering at this - I'd be curious to hear his thoughts about it if he's around.

Good Reports about TED. Ted has a couple gotchas but I am confident that Dan (the author) is actively improving the product - and it is a wonderful editor and the native "EPR" export file - which has info like where you placed trees, buildings, their scale, the camera range, fog distance, sun light color and "Height only" placement - (forgot if it has direction - I think so...), all in all very neat - text based - easy to use format. Tricky stuff to remember - is that is was written in blitzbasic and so some "numbers" and "flag Settings" need to be translated to the best "fit" in DBPRo/DarkGDK - this takes some trial and error - and occasionally a stop at the TED forum to see what flags mean what etc.



TECHNIQUES: For my Ted Loader, (and if I do 3dws I'll probably do the same thing) , is I have ported some decent "clouds" code from a dark basic demo titled simply "Clouds" - they are just wispy clouds - but I modified this so I can have three colors - one for each of the three "Altitude layers" I set up. Why is this a technique? Well - I have the ability to CREATE the initial clouds, and then a routine I can call (timer based) to keep the clouds moving smoothly throughout the game. The Technique is that I made my TED EPR (native file format) loader able to read some settings that match the "look" i want by simply typing into the Main Custom Section (Called INITS):

CLOUDLAYER1=230,200,200
CLOUDLAYER1=230,230,200
CLOUDLAYER1=230,230,230

This gives me three sets of colors - layer1 being the lowest.

Also, another technique that isn't rocket science but weidl awesome results is setting up a uniform SkyBox set up - and then making a directory called Sky or SkyBox - and have each "One" in its own directory. Also - toss in your water shader code and any relevant color tiles that match the "look and feel" of said Skybox. Make it consistant in each directory - where they look different but - are called into and "Made visible" the same way for each one. Then - as I have done - is I can load a "Ted Level" and either use the default skybox settings it has (6 files that make up the textures for your skybox) or override this in my EPR loader by a command in the CUSTOM area:

SKYBOX=Sky\SummerDay1

This overrides the default - and loads a specific one. Also - I mentioned water because I added a feature for that as well - But NOT in the INITS area - in the OBJECT INSTANCES Area - so I can say that a object I placed - is infact water:

WATER=Sky\Summer

I also added a "smoother" water shader for say ponds and small lakes:

LAKE=Sky\Summer

typically - I use the "WATER" shader only for the surrounding ocean and use the OBJECT INSTANCE custom area for the lake setting because in life - inland bodies of water are usually calmer.

So I can now - either inside my program or by parsing the EPR file when I load a level - control water. I have options. Save multiple EPR text files with different settings, and call them by name - this is cool because the media is more or less shared - and the EPR Text files with custom sections etc is quite small. This allows changes many thing without needing to recompile the game. Alternately - because my little code lib allows me to call the same internal functions - I can change a sky, clouds, and water stuff in the program if necessary - perhaps a transition from night to morning or water turning green from poisnous algae that glows in the moonlight - who knows.

It was a bit of work to get this all set up - that is having a system for this sort of thing in place however the fact that I can reuses it over and over - game to game - screen to screen - makes it worth the effort to me - and generally a decent media/shader etc environment system can be useful regardless o f the underlying engine - DarkGDK, DBPro or other.

I thought I should mention I wasn't the first to make a TED loader - but I definately took the example code that was available - studied it - even started to use it - until I understood the format better and how I could use it to my advantage. At this point it made sense to me to rewrite the loader from scratch - my way - so its serves my game, my uses, etc. Generic doesn't always get you where you want to be.



Camera Settings - I don't have much to say here except that often in the forums I hear - keep camera from 1-5000 - default is good - or other such claims. I personally have tried things from Near range .1 to far range 10 to things as big as .5 near and 100000 far!! Results? Vary - depends on the # of polys, the camera settings may or may not work as desired depending on eprspective etc - but I definately think "Whatever works" is the rule versus trying to stay in som limits that just happen to work for others.

The camera thing is that there isn't way to recall FOV (Field of view) the angle from your "cam eye" you see in front of you. You can get various effects from using BIG FOV - like that view in many race car - rogue car street racer games" to very intesting shots with very small FOV. Note - you can tell DB/DarkGDK what you want FOV to be, and you can change it on the fly - but I've yet to find a command to read back its current value. Solution, set up a variable, and your own FOV Set and Get functions so you always can read it back. Why? ZOOM LENS! The larger the FOV is initially - the more room you have to shrik it. Shrinking it magnifies stuff! The thing you have to remember - is that if you have LOD (Level of detail code) based on distance from camera - (and the bad guy is kinda far is using a low res model) - you need to remember that if you ZOOM in on him - you'll want him high poly. There probably could be implemented an algorythm to make the FOV and DISTANCE of the object from the camera keep the same "LOD" look and feed - but personally - if my FOV is over a certain angle and the object in question is INSCREEN - this is usually good enough to decide to switch to highpoly for that model. Note - this is along side other "code" that excludes models that aren't on screen etc and other such mechanisms in an effort to keep the action and frame rates happening smoothly. I have only done this in DarkBAsic Pro so far but I'm sure the rules are the same. I really love that in Iron Infantry - flying a helicopter - I can see a little dude running across a field - who looks like an ant, hit the scroll wheel on the mouse and zoom right up on him (Apache TADS system kinda) - and then saw him down with the machine gun. I hear he is not to happy about it though

The other thing I'm doing now to get that perfect "look" (which is an ongoing battle and I can only say I'm working on it) is taking the work that Visigoth did and trying to take it a bit further. Let me start by saying he has done AWESOME dynamically making Meshes based on the satelite information. At first I was like WOW - Satelite - that must of been hard - but after looking at his code - that isn't the hard part. The hard part (I need to study a lot more) is how he took the height information (the satelite info is actually fairly easy if you cover a limited area) and made the Terrain meshes totally in memory! "Welded Vertices", Adjusted Normals(setting up the faces properly), adjusting vertex lighting.... WOW - that is much harder than reading a grid with elevation... basically an array of "Y" values!

Anyways - His demo/source is limited to a certain size of Satelite info - you could change it to get a bigger smaplinig... but I personally like the detail reange he has - its just limited in the ballpark of only viewing 1000x1000x10meter at a time - Approximately. What I'm trying to do to leverage that is make a way that you can load any size grid you want, and it chops up the area and places it into these VisiGoth GeoMapping digestable "chunks" - and then modifying his code so it saves all the meshes, all three resolutions. The utility I'm making that does the cunking will also make heightmaps bitmaps - both 1024x1024 or smaller as well as making tiny tiled ones if desired. Why? as a tool to either import the tiles into systems where heightmap is all that will do OR as a guide to texturing the little buggers.

I'm not trying to make a facy UI, fancy anything - just trying to be able to make a decent LOD system based on these tiles - three resolutions, and they are small enough tiles where dynamic loading might be very feasible - so I'm going to try it. I realized the Terrain editors are limited in "size" no matter what you do - but this technie - not unlike how Flight Simulator and X-Plane kind work - seems inteeresting to me.

I've though about how the world isn't perfectly round, and how the coordinates of the bottom left of the maps is stated in degrees longitude and latude, and have not come up with a miracle solution to turn what is a ROUND GLOBE into a perfect set of seamless worldwide tiles. So - All I'm really trying to do is download say instead of a couple square miles at a time - is perhaps beable to take a 20mile square satelite download and turn it into a system of hi, med, low resolutions with as little work as possible. download it, dice it with my tool, feed it to Visigoth's system (modified to save the meshs as directX with numbered filename so can reload and know where they go) and probably make my tool do more than heightmaps - maybe take the satelite pictures of the terrain and use that as "Starter Textures" - tiled nicely or "Big Textures" ... dunno - its a side project - I feel will help make Iron infantry that much more cool. Satelite terrain just has the right proportions and nature has a way of drawing its own terrain better than I can - I'll just present it as best I can and color as best I can ... again - using nature as my guide.

Phew - Got work to do...later

Jason ... you had any luck yet getting the lightmapping working with T.Ed terrains in GDK (or DBPro for that matter).

I can export a lightmap from T.Ed, import it as an image, apply it to the terrain object using the dbSetLightMappingOn function but it simply tiles it in the same way as the terrain textures are tiled. If you try and scale it using dbScaleObjectTexture then it scales all the textures and you loose those lovely high detail textures! Seems you cannot scale one texture independent of the others.

Come to think of it ... scaling the lightmap bitmap up to the full terrain size is going to kill the shadow resolution anyhow. Would need to scale the image in Photoshop to keep the res but then end up with an enormous lightmap file! I know the Supertexture option would work as we could scale the single texture but then we will have lost the high res textures. Hmmm ... not looking good!

Looks like the TED author has only partially implemented the .DBO export as 3DWS manages to export the terrain complete with lightmapping and all of the meshes into a single .DBO file! Nice and compact for loading. You can leave them all as a multi limbed object or split them once it’s loaded, we have the freedom of choice.

Of course, the alternative option is to lightmap the terrain and objects within the application dynamically .... opps did my frame rate just drop to unity

Any ideas?

About thie exact dilema you describe? Kinda. A thought really - but you need to pay to test it out - which in this case just stinks. TGC as a program called GILES. Its lightmapping software. It supposedly (According to TGC presales "Enquiry Response") exports a DBO with everything NICELY light rendered for you.

But ultimately - we're pretty much in the same boat now. We have powerful tools and a limited way to see their full potential in DBpro/DarkGDK. I admit there may be something we just don't know how to do that would require black wizardry code - ultimately giving us what we are looking for.

I DO NOT know if this is compatible with TED6 method - (Or the home brew version way for ted5) I would venture the guess by the time you're done (If you got them all to work reasonably together) you'd have 3 MESHES per terrain! (Ugh ) 1 base - 1 Alpha map - 1 light/shadow map.

I still love TED and I do not think its TED's fault that it works funky in DBPro. If you think about it - he DOES export the light map externally if you opt, same for alpha map, and frankly - tyhe way to REALLY make it all work DOES seem to be some wizardry.

Why? Well - the whole tiled texture issue - in a direct x file - has to do with the "Material Coordinates" - if there was a way in DBPro, or another modeling package perhaps - to allow multi-textures -like one tiled, and another "Draped" across the whole thing - we could get the mem savings of tiled textures and still get nice light maps - and possibly alpha.

Also - more work on our part - but possibly the PERFECT FIX is a shader. Green Gandalf has this cool @## shader that allows you to have multiple textures on a mesh! He uses what I've heard called a color map. A DDS file that the color RED means use one texture, Green another, and blue yet another - and I believe is would do "Blending" if the colors were not solid. He also uses the ALPHA channel of the DDS for yet another texture I believe - for Roads! This equates to four textures being recycled - over and over - and the biggest "Drain" is the color map - which I don't think has to be the resolution as the tile's mesh - meeaning it could be stretched most likely like any other texture. ALSO - if you combine this (Still better than alpha layer - but if it has to be done so be it. I'm thinking it MIGHT be possible to use the Light Map in a similiar way - with a shader or something - because I saw on the NVIDIA site a shader that does a black "Faded" masking - like - to make a human face appear to be only half illuminated. More stuff to learn you know? <grrrr> But the dream of completely WYSIWYG Terrain editing - seems to elude me still.

I hope you don't regret buying Ted - as it seems more powerful to me than we are able to use - but - I don't doubt its power - because in BlitzBasic (What its written in) it is surely WYSIWYG.

It CAN look that good with the right engine - I know it - I've seen it.

You really should consider emailing me to see what I'm REALLY thinking heavily about these days. Still researching these terrain issues - but you should email me bro Sooner than later

Thanks for the reply Jason.

With regard to Giles I will have to check it out. I know that some people rate it quite highly. But I'm a little wary at just throwing more money at the problem at this point in time without some guarantees that it will solve the problem. I notice that Giles does not import .dbo files and its export is described on TGC's Giles page as being:

Experimental exporter, support for most settings

Which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence!

I, like you, am very much at the point where I feel I have the front end design toolset I need in terms of T.Ed (which I have no regrets about buying) and 3DWS (another great tool) and various other design aids but am constantly being hampered by an inability to get the results in need in GDK (or DBPro).

With regard to the shader solution that was something I had already started to look at and it’s definitely worth exploring. However, this is like the bump mapping issue where there are workarounds in terms of shader solutions but I'm left thinking ... why should we need to go to these lengths when the facility to apply a lightmap to a multitextured terrain and apply bumpmaps should be core parts of the development system.

By the way, I tried creating a copy of the terrain mesh as another layer (yes ... more polys) and applying the lightmap texture to that but haven't managed to get it to work successfully without getting lots of graphical glitches!

Your description of Wizardry code made me laugh as that’s just how it feels at times. 80% of my development time seems to be spent these days trying to find ways round issues with the development system and gaining this 'Dark Knowledge' of tricks, frigs and workarounds!

Hope I’m not sounding too despondent

My son's patiently waiting for me so I'm going to have to go but I'll probably drop you an email later.

I got a big 0 working with the alpha levels used in the 3dws format for the terrain. I didn't have much time to work on it however and the new building project at work and a ton of family problems have plagued me since. I will however be getting back to that this weekend if all at all possible. I should be off work most of this weekend, however I do have to go to my cousin/ lil sister/ best friend's (yeah all the same person ... long story) birthday party so it may hinder me a bit. I'll let you know what I find out. The problem I had was always getting the terrain to draw in the correct order. DBP's alpha support is quite lacking from what I have seen before. I haven't tried in a while though. There is an awesome command in IanM's new plugins (SET LIMB TRANSPARENCY) which may tip the balance.



I used to be when I had more free time, I mostly just pop in now and again for the past 7 months or so due to the above mentioned time hinderances. I have also gotten quite tired of trying constant DBP work-arounds. When NB is completed I will most likely leave DBP in the horrid past. NB is getting closer to release and Matthew actually listens to his testers (me anyway and I'm sure the others). I will make sure I can write a 3dw importer easily with it's command set.



Thats because his file format docs are horribly inaccurate and confusing, unlike his editor itself which is awesomely easy to use. I wasted a many an hour just trial and error getting the format down. I don't know what he was smoking when he came up with that format, I liked the layout of the csm way better. I posted a revised format there in my loader thread I believe. As far as I know his docs are still not updated.

Yeah Pixel Perfect - PLease email - its for you own gooD!

Thanks for the input Lost In Thought. I know you're kind of busy at the moment so it’s appreciated!

With regard to the 3DWS loader I haven't had a chance to look at your code yet but will do in the next few days. I would love to see this finished as it will open up some more possibilities.

Will look into the SET LIMB TRANSPARENCY command you mentioned too, as that might be the solution to some of the alpha problems I'm currently experiencing.

Just an update, I am going to be off work Sat and Sun of this week. I plan on finishing the 3DWS terrain loading in this time and think I have the solution we need. I'll post my solution if it works.

That's great news LIT. Good luck!

Hey jason p sage, Just want to drop in and say nice job with this thread. Also many thx to Pixel Perfect . I have been pulled of my 3d game engine assignment for now, but plan to return. This thread gust kicks but!!

Thank You Don't be gone too long Bro!

Terrain with alpha layers is now working in my 3dw Importer. The code can be found in the thread:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=100900&b=13

Look in the create terrain function mostly. Note also that alpha layers do not seem to work unless you turn transparency on for the object. I used mode 1, but the other's worked too fo the most part.

Lost In Thought... where ya been Bro? We Miss ya!