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List of level/map formats

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Started by Dab3r March 18, 2010 07:23 AM

5 comments, last by phresnel 14 years ago

Dab3r

100

Author

March 18, 2010 07:23 AM

Hi All! I'm new here and this is my first post! Yeah! ;-) OK, get to the point. I'm looking for some list of existing, well known formats of game's levels (or maps). Few words about me (maybe it will help you to answer more specific my questions): I am Cpp professional developer with some more then 3 years expirience on big, complex, commercial projects in Cpp and more then 7 years expirience on programming projects in other languages/technologies. I love games and was thinking for long time before about write some, but I didn't so far. But I have already read a lot of articles about game development, so I have some teoretical basics. And now: my plan is to write simple 3D racing game based on my simple engine that I will build. It will be something like Need For Speed 1, if you remember (great game I loved :-) ), with simple open track with only one possible way to go. So first thing I think I should decide is kind of map format. The only one format I already knows (I read about it) is BSP, which I know is good for FPS games, but will not be good for my racing game. So I tryed to find (most of all on GDNet of course) some >>list of well known maps/levels formats<< which I could read and choose something that fits my needs best and didn't find any (I really googled a lot before posting). So do you know a kind of that formats list? Or -- if no -- could you give me a tip what you suggest would be good format with information about format's complexity? This format has to be good for: 1) rendering the graphic and 2) colision detection. PS. sorry for my english, I know it's not pperfect ;) Thanks in advance, Regs., Michal

Dab3r

100

Author

March 24, 2010 12:49 AM

Hey guys, i'm little shocked... No one knows it?... Here on GDNet?... Or you just don't like me?...

Regs.
Dab3r

Hodgman

52,717

March 24, 2010 01:17 AM

BSP isn't a map format, it's a spatial partitioning data structure. Lots of FPS game's map formats happen to use BSP-trees, but there's a lot more to the map format than just a BSP-tree.

There's no reason to go reverse engineering a format used by an existing game or engine -- if you're making a new engine for this game, just make a new format based on your requirements.

Racing games usually just have a list/loop of sections of track. Each section has a visual mesh and a collision mesh authored in your modelling package of choice.
e.g.

<map> <chunk graphics="G_Section_01.mdl" physics="C_Section_01.mdl" offset="0,0,0"/> <chunk graphics="G_Section_02.mdl" physics="C_Section_02.mdl" offset="0,0,100" /> <chunk graphics="G_Section_03.mdl" physics="C_Section_03.mdl" offset="0,0,200" /></map>

. 22 Racing Series .

Gage64

1,235

March 24, 2010 01:22 AM

Take a look here.

If you decide to use Quake 3's level format, you might also be interested in this.