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Newcomers DBPro Corner / World Building help - GTA3 style

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Chris64
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Joined: 16th Oct 2004
Location: San Diego
Posted: 19th Oct 2004 06:16
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OK, I know trying to replicate a game of that size is a handfull...but I do want to be learning things in the right direction.

Going through ViceCity, the out door world is clearly not created with a matrix (except for the water). So theoretically I could create a huge city world using a program like Cartography Shop 4.

What am I missing here? Would that work? Would I want the entire city in one .x file? Would it move fast enough to actually work? Does DBP support any "world" type of files that are made up of many different objects.
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Richard Davey
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Posted: 19th Oct 2004 06:36
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Do bear in mind that whoever gives you some suggestions they are going to be only that - their own suggestions. Because no-one here has ever written a game as complex, large or as involved as GTA Vice City, and as no-one here worked on GTA either, they won't know how the game actually handles everything.

I would say almost certainly there is no way you'd have the whole city as a single .X file - think about how large it would have to be and the size of the texture alone! Break it down into smaller chunks, think smaller, work smaller.

"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde
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Chris64
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Joined: 16th Oct 2004
Location: San Diego
Posted: 19th Oct 2004 07:22
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I agree with what you said. Actually what I really want is personal experiences. Based on what I've seen, many people here seem to be building some pretty clever programs so they must have some experience with this type of situation.

So back to the question - Does DBP have any built in features for loading a whole world like some of the other engines (I believe Truevision3d offered something like that), or would I have to build my own world format/interpreter?

I'll experiment a little and post my results also.
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Chris64
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Posted: 19th Oct 2004 13:32
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OK,
I experimented a little...This leads me to a couple other questions.

I made a little drive around program with boxes in random locations. I put about 100 boxes out there on a textured matrix...things worked fine. Then I upped it to about 1000...a little longer to load but it ran OK...then I upped it to 10,000 boxes - this took FOREVER to start up and ran extremely slow (5-10 fps). Texturing the boxes didn't seem to have any real affect on speed. About the only thing that affected the FPS was how many boxes were within the visible space...as I got closer to the edge it ran significantly faster.

It ran OK up to about 5,000 boxes. Assuming each box is made up of 12 polygons, that works out to about 60,000 poly's. I tried a similar scenario using 500 objects with 729 poly's...That works out to about 360,000 poly's.

So the moral to the story is...poly count being equal, performance will be better with fewer objects.

So maybe if I grouped small city area's with high-res and low-res versions I could just swap them out as you get closer to each new area, but the low-res would still give an accurate landscape. It does appear GTA3/VC does something similar to this and looking at the actual data files in the program they did break down terrain data by area.

Can anyone contribute any thoughts to this or ways to improve general poly performance?
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OldTifu
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Posted: 19th Oct 2004 20:42
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I think someone made a little game that had a little of the feel of GTA. You ran around a randomly generated city, jumping in cars and driving around... it was either in Program Anouncements or WIP I forget which and can't see it on the first page...

If I was doing something like this, i'd try splitting the world into small squares, and only load the one you're standing on for collision, and the 8 surounding it just for visuals... then when you move to another square, you change which ones are loaded...
Not too small I mean, a decent size... but that's how i'd try it... never actually done anything like that yet *shrugs hopelessly*
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Cian Rice
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Posted: 19th Oct 2004 21:14
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On a side note, what about I World, that game resembles GTA 3. But to someeveryone up, making something like that will be hard and you will want to start simple like you plan.

There is only one way to package shaolin: Shaolin Soccer...
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Eric T
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Location: My location is where I am at this time.
Posted: 19th Oct 2004 21:28
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From what i understand, GTA3 is built in Chunks about the size of each of the "City Blocks". They aren't too big, but placed together nicely. I only learned this, when i was playing about 2 years ago, and it bugged out and actually showed me only chunk by chunk


http://www.liquidzsnake.dbspot.com/StairwayToHell.txt
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Osiris
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Joined: 6th Aug 2004
Location: Robbinsdale, MN
Posted: 20th Oct 2004 01:26
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why dont you just use fog like in vice city to cover up the other parts of the city before you go up to load them into the game or have it load in real time like in true crime streets of LA

anyone can be a hero, but a soldier can be a hero five minuets longer....
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