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3 Dimensional Chat / Moving on to the Great Indoors

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Northern Fist
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 05:29 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2003 05:59
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I've been messing around with matrixes for quite some time now. I'm starting to get bored with the outdoors.

I am thinking about starting to build my own simplistic interior "level" enigine that would use DB object to model the worlds (think Descent series). I've been wondering what steps people who have already walked this path have taken. Basically, any words of advice or any skills that you recommend I grapple with?

I'm mostly worried about memory management. For instance, I played one FPS a long time ago (I won't say which one for respect's sake), that had nice graphics and all, was made with DB objects, but had a crappy FPS rate. If I could make a interior game engine that was not as good as the original Descent (1994), but conserved memory, I would be happy and simply proclaim it as a good start.

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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QuothTheRaven
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 05:57
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No.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

NO NO.

NO.

NO!!

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MAKE AN ENTIRE LEVEL OUT OF DB OBJECTS.

EVER.

Unless it is very simple.

You wouldn't believe the slowdown having 50 cubes onscreen at once causes.

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Northern Fist
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 06:02 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2003 06:05
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Whoops, I was editing my message while someone posted. Sorry Quoth...

That's kind of a rude awakening. When you think about it 50 cubes means you've got, what, 300, polygons and 600 normals. That's not alot of polygons ! I'm a bit curios as to how that slowed things down so badly.

Any other pieces of advice welcomed.

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Metamophic
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 06:31
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for levels use a modeling package like cartograhpyshop or milkshape. this will save you a LOT of time!

www.freewebs.com/metamorphicsoft
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QuothTheRaven
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 06:40
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YES. There is no way to organize a level built out of DB objects. No way to texture it, no way to properly light it, and have fun figuring out exactly what db coordinant each wall has to be placed at.

Your level really should be an actualy .3ds or .x object.

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JeroenNL
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 13:02 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2003 13:03
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For levels you can also use DeleD of course. There are also some people busy with creating convertors for DeleD to export maps to .X files.

Use DeleD to get skilled in 3d editing! Visit http://www.gamefortress.com/delgine for more info.
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Van B
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 15:18
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I remember a while ago, someone made a demo of DBClassic running a quake3 level, not textured, but it was reasonably high poly and it did run pretty nicely - always go for modelled levels. If you want to expand a bit, you could look into splitting your level up into limbs and making your own BSP style occlusion system - doing that would keep the frame rates up.


Van-B


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Northern Fist
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 17:54
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@ metamophic

Cartography Shop appears to be a good deal. However, I'm a big cheepskate who likes to get more bang for the buck. I looks like milkshape is the way to go. However, I'm slightly confused as to how a modeller that was designed for character making/animation would be used as such.
What I'm guessing in milkshape is that you would model a level on a very small scale. Then you would later enlarge the .x in your progam to a much larger size. However, that would make the textures look like crap, am I right?

@ Quoth the Raven

Just hypothesizing: what if you were looking for something as simple as DOOM, and you only showed "sectors" of the level (that would be determined in the "level editor"). What is your advice on that? Is it still just as economical to simple load .x's using pricy modelers?

@ Jerome

I'd like some more info on DeleD - please.

@ VanB

Do you think you could pull up that program? I'm also curious on what you think of the question I posed at QuothTheRaven?

Thanks for the replies...

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Genesis Rage
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 18:03
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@Norther_Fist about your @QuothTheRaven
this is what Van B was meaning, in a sense. you could create a level it sectors, either using limbs like Van said, or export them as seperate files, and then just put them back together in code.

i use seperate .x files, exported from max. it makes it easier to lightmap and all that other junk. but when exporting from max it uses the worlds center as the pivot, not the objects. so if you create a level with 12 sectors, you create it so everything lines up, export, then when loaded into DBP position them all at the same location, and they automatically line up. works nicely for me.

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Northern Fist
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 21:20
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I see. I like it, but I'm sort of looking at both creating/using tools to create indoor worlds. That is why I initially asked about using DB objects. Do you think that MapEdit, created with Darkbasic, is a worthwhile tool for this, or does it face the same problem of relying on DB Objects?

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Northern Fist
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2003 21:49
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One additional question. If you wanted a level to have both the outdoors and the indoors, then would the outdoor sectors of the level incorporate some sort of "skybox" (no clue), with them or what?

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Van B
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Posted: 4th Nov 2003 01:56
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You always keep the skybox seperate, you should position it with the camera to keep the effect true. I suggest terragen, it's really great at making skybox textures.

I reckon that once we have some .x exporters, DeleD will be a pretty neat solution for level editing.


Van-B


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Northern Fist
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Posted: 4th Nov 2003 05:35
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Awesome! Thanks for the replies guys. I'll be looking into all those tools and methods. I will most likely be running into troubles with my ignorance and/or low funding, but hey, that's life.

Happy coding .

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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qwe
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Posted: 4th Nov 2003 17:02
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northern said
"in milkshape is that you would model a level on a very small scale. Then you would later enlarge the .x in your progam to a much larger size. However, that would make the textures look like crap, am I right?"

i'd like a reply to this. i use milkshape to make worlds, and when incorporated into the game the textures are very strechted.

thanks
chris
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Northern Fist
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Posted: 4th Nov 2003 17:51
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I would like one too. I feel it would affect my decision to buy Milkshape or not.

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Van B
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Posted: 4th Nov 2003 17:54
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Ok, survival guide for texturing indoor levels:

The most important thing is tileable textures, for example, take a brick wall - your wall might be 800x400 units long and high, so stretching that texture over the whole thing is a bad idea. You'll most likely have a few square textures that are seamless, so go hunting for them and keep copies of them in a safe place. The trick is to use a tileable texture and stretch the UV mapping to suit the dimensions of the wall. In real terms, a UV map on a wall would be made up of a little square which is relative to the texture - each corner of the square sits at each corner of the texture. Now, this is why you always use single tileable texture images, you stretch the UV map out, say on your 800x400 wall, you wanted a square texture of bricks to cover it nicely without stretching - lets say 4x2 textures over the whole wall. I'd probably use Lithunwrap, but anyway, adjust the UV coordinates so that the texture sits inside a big square (made from the UV coordinates) that is twice as high and 4 times as wide as the texture. Imagine the UV coordinates makes an envelope and the texture is the stamp. This will repeat the texture over the polygons because - when UV data goes off the texture, it repeats on the other side. This is similar to the effects created by scaling an objects texture inside DB. I suggest using UV mapping software that allows uniform scaling, like Lithunwrap for example because that lets you simply scale UV coordinates based on values you enter, nice and easy to say scale X by 4 and Y by 2 - that's enough to get the texture repeating perfectly.


Van-B


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qwe
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Posted: 5th Nov 2003 23:21
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with milkshape texture coordinate editor, you can only tile the texture if the texture yuo are using is a seperate image. if you have all of your textures for an object in one file, you can only tile the whole texture at a time.

any way to tile only a piece of a .bmp with just milkshape? or do i need to get lith unwrap? or is lith unwrap not able to do this?

is there really much difference between four 32 by 32 textures and one 128 by 128 texture?
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JoelJ
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Posted: 6th Nov 2003 00:48
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yes there is a way to use just bits and peices in MS. use the Corrdinate editor. i dont have ms anymore, but i know for a fact that it can be done, iv done it

Two words, moo.
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Van B
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Posted: 6th Nov 2003 10:24
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Quote: "always use single tileable texture images"


Nope, it's impossible to tile an image if it does'nt repeat on itself. You could stretch out on 1 axis, like half your texture might be a wall texture, this could be stretched out, but you'll see how that works once you start to experiment.

Trust me on this, you need to use individual textures.


Van-B


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Northern Fist
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Posted: 6th Nov 2003 17:31
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Van-B's advice makes perfect sense to me. If you are using only one bitmap to texture rooms of your level, you'll end up stretching the texture to fit the wall, else you will get wals that look like multi-textured quilts - not good.

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Northern Fist
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Posted: 6th Nov 2003 17:38
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I know this sounds off, but to what degree should you bloat the level segments you would make in, say, milkshape. This would be dependant on the size of the characers. In bloating the level segments, would that make it impossible to "steatch to fit" textures on particular walls?

"Power, precision, and don't forget about speed. If you practice everyday with these things in mind... you begin to develope A FIGHTING MODE." - Fist of Legend (Jet Li)
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Van B
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Posted: 6th Nov 2003 17:55
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There's no good way of knowing that, it's really a matter of trial and error I'm afraid. I would most likely make the meshes on a grid system, and use that as a guide - once you have the walls matching, it's fairly easy to scale the UV data on the whole lot to suit your texture. So I suggest sticking to a grid with the textures, then after your happy with your mesh, scale them until the texture looks good - probably the biggest concearn with brick style textures.

3DS Max is quite well suited to level design because you can actually decide on the scale before even making your meshes.

Lithunwrap can do a good job, but would be a bit tedious to use unless you prepped the model for it beforehand.

Materialize3D, now that's the bomb for this kinda work - not very well known but I've found it a seriously usefull piece of kit. You can select polygons, and type the UV coordinates in, then project them. In other words, say you have a wall that is quite an irregular size and shape, and want to scale a brick texture onto it - you'd select all the walls polygons, enter the UV coordinates, width and height, both sets so that it repeats nicely - then you have it. Quite a quick way to do achive the effect, because you have exact polygon control, no need to worry about the shape of the mesh, you just select what polys get what texture and how big.


Van-B


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