yes i know that dx7 is out of date and all, but if there''s any help to be had, that would be a good thing
so
im not a math guru, and im writing a 3d strategy game with similar camera limitations to warcraft3. (angle, spinning, zoom etc)
my initial tries at implementing this have been somewhat flawed in several areas, any of which you are all welcome to point out what im doing wrong in.
a) the camera can sometimes see the ugly unrendered-ness beyond the bounds of the map. this was never a problem with 2d strat games, because you could work out when the map edge coincided with your screen edge and limit the scrolling to make things look nice, but.....
the prob here is that depending on the current view angle, the "padding" distance around the edge of the map where the camera is not allowed can change
im aware that there are solutions for this, most likely involving some naasty 3d trig, but as i said, im no math guru
b) my heightmap is fairly coarse and im using a "doodad layer" or objects rendered on top of the terrain to give it more detail. this is so it can run comfortably on a k6-2 266, which is all i have to develop on
now that''s not a problem in itself, but it becomes one when you try to "float" the camera above the terrain - its all jerky on the y-axis when you scroll the map..like the original AOE
ive got a feeling its my math knowledge that''s letting me down here - is there some nice easy way to interpolate the height values between vertices so the movement is smooth?
c) this isnt a big problem yet, mainly because ive been hiding from it
but while single-unit selection is a piece of cake, how do you work out whether something is within a selection box? i think sampling might not cut it, and it would be slow
im aware that the box is actually a frustum projected into the world from the screen, but how do you work out whether an object is inside the frustum? again, math
would be very grateful if anyone can help me on these issues :D
thanx
Qatal
