Anyone try "tileable" terrains ?
Author
Has anyone here ever tried to do "tileable" terrains ?
I did some experiments with a friend this past year. The
results came out pretty good. The premise is the same as
in isometric bitmap based games but with 3d tiles instead
having multiple LODs that meet up at edges giving the ability
to have almost unlimited world size and awesome frame rate.
Rungy
www.rungy.com
eh... this is a little hard for me, im not one to ask for help, but would it be possible for you maybe to share this data with me? since i had to completely destroy my old map engine (too slow, assy load times, poor graphical quality, etc) it would be greatly appreciated
Yah, its very easy to do and most RTS games comming out are using tile based terrain engines, specifically Empire Earth, WarCraft 3, and Age of Mythology. Go their websites and look at their screen shots. Empire Earth is already available and has a pretty good tile terrain engine.
Possibility
Possibility
rungy: I'm working on the same thing right now. "Game Programming Gems II" has an article about implementing such a thing (it's very good). I don't know if you could call the results awsome. I think a well written ROAM or quatree+LOD scheme could be better. How many levels of detial did you use?
black_mage_s: To make a long story short: Build an index buffer that will render square regions of your heightmap. For every level of detial you want you need to make an indexbuffer that will draw the same size square with fewer verticies. This leads to a problem: Parts of your terrain get rendered at hight detial and other parts get rendered at lower detial. You end up with nasty seems that don't look cool at all. To fix this you need to make index buffers that will conect high detial 'tiles' to low detial 'tiles'. Yes, a very long story short. If you don't get it I can read the article in Game Programming Gems II agian and try to expain it better.
Now that I think about it the gem might be in the first book not the second.
Edited by - Abstraction on January 14, 2002 8:18:08 PM
black_mage_s: To make a long story short: Build an index buffer that will render square regions of your heightmap. For every level of detial you want you need to make an indexbuffer that will draw the same size square with fewer verticies. This leads to a problem: Parts of your terrain get rendered at hight detial and other parts get rendered at lower detial. You end up with nasty seems that don't look cool at all. To fix this you need to make index buffers that will conect high detial 'tiles' to low detial 'tiles'. Yes, a very long story short. If you don't get it I can read the article in Game Programming Gems II agian and try to expain it better.
Now that I think about it the gem might be in the first book not the second.
Edited by - Abstraction on January 14, 2002 8:18:08 PM
Author
Black Mage S, I can share the GFX data I have, the code
is property of another. What format would you like it in?
It is created in 3DS Max 4.2 ( ase, .x , .3ds are easy )
Possibilty, thanks for the info, I''ll check those out
Abstraction, yeah the problem with edges is not a code issue
but an art one. Seams occur if the artist does not take the time
to ensure the face normals translate smoothly across edges of
separate objects. In a case of an animated object it is almost
impossible to match those normals for two separate but adjacent
objects. However, with a solid object it is very easy to get
rid of that crease and therefore eliminate the ugly edge. We
were shooting for 3 LODs.
I''ll post a link to the data as soon as I zip it up and post it
on my site.
Runge
is property of another. What format would you like it in?
It is created in 3DS Max 4.2 ( ase, .x , .3ds are easy )
Possibilty, thanks for the info, I''ll check those out
Abstraction, yeah the problem with edges is not a code issue
but an art one. Seams occur if the artist does not take the time
to ensure the face normals translate smoothly across edges of
separate objects. In a case of an animated object it is almost
impossible to match those normals for two separate but adjacent
objects. However, with a solid object it is very easy to get
rid of that crease and therefore eliminate the ugly edge. We
were shooting for 3 LODs.
I''ll post a link to the data as soon as I zip it up and post it
on my site.
Runge
I am working on my first map file format and a loader. It consists of a declare file and a define file. In the declare file you designate a two-letter code to correspond to each model file, light, or other object. Items such as weapons and power-ups have reserved codes. In the define file you define the position of each two-letter code on an x-z plane for each y value. When this is done, it will be very intense.
If you had enough Triangles in your tile, you could simply make the edges of the tile always the same, and only perform LOD on the interior triangles. This would elimintate cracking.
Z.
Z.
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