OpenGL Terrain Engine

Xanthen · 2002-01-04T01:13:50

I thought I would show some screenshots of my terrain engine. I''d like honest feedback. My question is, When water is in area and I draw the polygon representing it, the fps drop to 20 from 45. The water is just a gigantic pair of polygons. Is it actually better to draw a lot of smaller ones than 1 really big one? http://www.planetquake.com/tdk/index3.html

Graphics and GPU Programming Programming OpenGL

Started by Xanthen January 02, 2002 12:25 PM

20 comments, last by Xanthen 22 years, 3 months ago

Xanthen

115

Author

January 02, 2002 06:33 PM

To smooth I just took some height from one vertex and put it in the vertices all around it. Nothing special but it works well enough.

Texture covers whatever area you specify.

That next question has no bearing whatsoever on anything I do. In fact I can''t even understand what you were trying to ask

I use triangle strips.

The map is actually gigantic.
I mean really really gigantic. 1000 tiles wide 1000 tiles tall. A flat piece of ground you see about 20x20 tiles so thats 2500 DIFFERENT SCREEN FULLS. Actually its so absurdly large that it would take a level designer a year to fill it up. So obviously I will want to reduce its size tremendously but until It starts to slow down the processor theres no need. I get 45 fps running at 1280x1024 resolution with no objects loaded in the game and no water. But obviously if I have 4000 monsters then the map is gonna have to be smaller to perform the ai for that many things. So map size is only going to be limited to the amount of creatures in game.

XanGame ProgrammerVolition Inc.

GalaxyQuest

122

January 02, 2002 07:15 PM

Ok, sorry if you didnt understand my question about "spraying".

What I was refering to is this, you said:

quote: by Xanthen
Now i''m satisfied so i draw on the ground with my texture applicator.

To me, this can mean 2 different things. First is if you simply select a premade texture to be applied to that tile from file. The second idea, which is what I asked you about, would be to actually CREATE the texture right there by applying a type of "spray effect" similar to the spray can in paint programs. So, as you spray around the map, some of that color would be placed on adjacent tiles. This is where my question comes in. Sorry. Maybe I should just have asked if you simply select from a bunch of loaded textures the one you wish to place on a single tile...hehe...oh well.

I tend to make things a lil tuff on myself.

Xanthen

115

Author

January 02, 2002 07:52 PM

I use a premade texture and apply it to the tile

Actually constructive feedback would be prefered.
not just oh it looks nice or what not.

Edited by - Xanthen on January 2, 2002 9:18:16 PM

XanGame ProgrammerVolition Inc.

GalaxyQuest

122

January 02, 2002 10:29 PM

Ok. Your water looks very tiled. It is also too transparent. Even in the blown up screenshot i cant tell how deep the water is suppose to be, so I can only guess as to the deepness. So, unless it is a shallow stream, you normally dont see the bottom.

From the look of it, you seem to tile your graphics well(i dont see really apparent edges), except for the water, which looks bad.

The lighting isnt too great either. Is it daytime? Im not sure if you mentioned if you had lighting in it or not. If not, that is somethin you can work twiddled.

Also, I think your asking for deeper critism that is simply hard to just give out after just looking at a few screenshots. Not to mention that I have been the one who has to ask you many questions just to get the info on what is going on. Make a webpage describing how you made this, what techniques you use for texturing, the height mesh, lighing, shadow effects, blah blah blah...we could have gone straight into critism if you had this stuff, so there you have it. :/

Edited by - GalaxyQuest on January 2, 2002 11:36:09 PM

Xanthen

115

Author

January 02, 2002 11:10 PM

Typically you don''t need to know how an engine works to know what looks good and what doesn''t. But yes I know the water sucks, I just got it in yesterday and the artist guy is finishing up a different project before he starts helpin me so all the artwork is just temporary stuff. And the transparency on it is temporary as well.
But yes now that you mention it, My lightning does need some serious attention. For some reason I hadn''t noticed how.... far off it is.

Hahah, looking at the editor shots I showed I see how truely horrible it is. I was just doing a vertex normal and doing a crossproduct with a verticle for sun, but I guess thats not the way to do it.

XanGame ProgrammerVolition Inc.

Xanthen

115

Author

January 03, 2002 11:22 AM

What is a good way to do lighting on terrain?

XanGame ProgrammerVolition Inc.

CGameProgrammer

640

January 03, 2002 12:55 PM

The water appears to be the only transparent texture, so it seems clear to me that the transparency is what's slowing you down. Make it opaque and you should see the framerate increase.

As for lightning, I found gouraud shading to work very well. I just calculate the light color for each vertex in software, and have OpenGL use gouraud shading.

You can download mine to see it, I have a sun and moon that rise and set... they're not drawn but the lighting for them is calculated.

The controls are W/S to walk forward/backwards, A/D to strafe left/right, and the mouse to look around. F5 toggles wireframe on/off, F6 switches between gouraud and flat shading, and F7 toggles on/off texture linear interpolation.

There are optional command line parameters. Here they are:
/size 640x480
/size 800x600
/size 1024x768
/size 1280x960
/bitdepth 16
/bitdepth 32
/zbitdepth 16
/zbitdepth 24
/mode window
/mode fullscreen

Here's the link: www.geocities.com/cgamedude/Vista.zip

~CGameProgrammer( );

Edited by - CGameProgrammer on January 3, 2002 1:57:31 PM

~CGameProgrammer( );Developer Image Exchange -- New Features: Upload screenshots of your games (size is unlimited) and upload the game itself (up to 10MB). Free. No registration needed.

ANSI2000

122

January 03, 2002 01:44 PM

Also logically speaking. For the polygon count of your water...

A quad/2 triangles should work, unless you wish to animate it with waves etc... Then you will have to break it down to smaller polys to make smoothe waves...

GalaxyQuest

122

January 03, 2002 07:04 PM

Hey CGameProgrammer, the lighting you do seems pretty cool.

I couldnt watch long because the change from day-night/night-day WAS SO FAST it gave me a headache!!

quarnin

122

January 03, 2002 07:28 PM

CGameProgrammer:

Loaded your example, but, oddly, polygons kept popping up and down... some sort of bug? (a couple times I saw large pyramids taller than the hills rising from the valleys and falling again with a subtle change of direction...)

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