Hi every one,
I want to create a simple 3D strategic game with my own engine now ,I want to know what techniques are exist for creating terrain and witch of those have the best performance and quality for STRATEGIC games!!
I should mention that I will create my engine with SlimDx with Direct3D 11 thus i can use the performance of tessellation.
Any idea will help me!
Thanks.
Well since you mentioned Directx 11, then this might suit you for the terrain:
But this also depends on what kind of features your terrain should support.
PS. What kind of strategy? top down, dynamic, etc?
Good Luck!
-MIGI0027
There's lots of possibilities when it comes to creating terrain. One I have done recently utilizes simplex( or perlin ) noise generation for a heightmap which then in turn is generated into a map. It allows random map generation, but also allows you keep seeds and regenerate exact maps at any time.
You can also dive into it a bit further and compare the different height relationships at a per pixel basis to generate unique features( sudden change from black to white is a cliff and you can add a rocky texture over it with rocks. Subtle changes in the gray area could be sweeping hills with grass and trees, etc..
Thanks to all,
About the displacement map that MIGI said, I think we have some problems ,assume that we have a car on the terrain that moves from point A to point B,to finding the changes in height we must sample the the displacement map. now assume that we have 300~500 cars, i think this method cause to reduce texture bandwidth (this is just a think)!!!!!
But this also depends on what kind of features your terrain should support.
All direction terrain: Voxel or Vector Displacement Maps
Static, Displacement mapping or generated (2nd)
Dynamic, I recommend displacement mapping, as you can overlap another texture for explosions n. stuff!
I need the terrain to be dynamic.
About the displacement map that MIGI said, I think we have some problems ,assume that we have a car on the terrain that moves from point A to point B,to finding the changes in height we must sample the the displacement map. now assume that we have 300~500 cars, i think this method cause to reduce texture bandwidth (this is just a think)!!!!!
i was just dealing with this issue myself.
all entity / unit / target movement for ground targets will need to reference game specific height map data of some sort, to set the "altitude" of the unit at its new position. for this reason, ground unit movement can not be totally de-coupled from game specific height map data, even using generic rectilinear kinematics. game specific collision checks during stepped movement is another intractable coupling between generic unit movement and game specific data.
its often a good idea to keep two separate representations of the world, one for graphics, and one for physics. using the graphics representation for doing physics stuff can sometimes be inefficient. using two representations can help address the issue you mention above.
you'll only need voxels to do arches and overhangs and stuff. if you don't need those, you can use a displacement mapped mesh of quads. since you're displacement mapping in the vertex shader, its automatically dynamic, based on the displacement map you use - which you can modify as needed before drawing.
for small maps you can use a single level map or chunks, made by hand in an editor.
for really big maps, you'll probably want to go procedurally generated heightmap and chunks.
texturing is just a matter of how bleeding edge you want to get.
Thanks Norman Barrows,
With all descriptions ,seems that the best technique is to use displacement map.
I think the DetailTessellation11 sample in directx sdk is a good sample that i can use it to create terrain for strategic games but i need to make some changes in code and algorithm(i think) , for example i need to divide the quad to small quads for culling.
Any idea??
excuse for bad english.
Ahh!
But maybe you don't need culling, you could base the amount of tessellation on the distance from the eyeposition to the vertex position (modal space).
But maybe you don't need culling, you could base the amount of tessellation on the distance from the eyeposition to the vertex position (modal space).
I think this is good idea for small terrain but for large terrain i don't think so.
