Game Level Design Issues 2005-06-28 - By Thomas Moffat Grimes
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Hi Omar,
I actually think booleans are a bad idea, particularly if you want to be going
to a game engine in the end. Building each wall separately - certainly
separately from the floor but I actually think a room should be five cubes
being the floor, four walls, and a ceiling - is most likely the best solution.
3D game engines have all sorts of restrictions that tS itself doesn't. What
displays fine in the tS realtime renderer may not display as well in a game
engine, due to concave faces, faces with more than 3 vertices, and so on.
Booleans cause all sorts of trouble in this respect, as do rooms made of
hollowed out cubes.
Fortunately, great advice is available on the gameSpace tutorial pages:
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/tutorial/index.asp
In particular, see these tutorials on making levels,
This page lists why booleans are "evil" (for cutting a hole in a cube to act as
a window or door, so very specific to your situation) and the alternative to
using them:
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/tutorial/level_exporter.asp
Then others on creating levels:
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/products/ag_mapper/ag_mapper_tutorial.asp
And a series of 3 on making prefabs to build your levels from (prefabs being
pre-prepared blocks to use to assemble a level from - in this instance you
could have pre-prepared "door blocks" that you could place into your rooms,
then just make the remaining walls match up - eg a door block could be made of
door itself, then a frame around it of separate cubes, and this could be placed
in any room
and the rest of the wall made of separate cubes around it, say):
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/tutorial/fantasy_prefabs01.asp
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/tutorial/fantasy_prefabs02.asp
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/tutorial/fantasy_prefabs03.asp
I think this advice will prove invaluable, as this is not just about how to
model it in tS, but how to make sure it will work in a 3D engine. tS is very
forgiving, able to render all sorts of geometry that other 3D apps and 3D game
engines / languages would not be able to cope with, so you will need to plan
ahead and model in a certain way in order to ensure that once you export
everything still
works as planned (don't want you to solve this with hollowed cubes, only to
find when you export you have to start all over again because the 3D engine you
export to can't handle it!)
Thanks!
Tom
Thomas Moffat Grimes
Marketing Communications
Caligari Corporation
mailto:thomas@(protected)
http://www.caligari.com
-- --Original Message-- --
From: TSML [mailto:truespace@(protected)] On Behalf Of Omar Campos
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 7:14 AM
To: MailingList truespace
Subject: [TSML] Game Level Design Issues
Hello everyone,
I guess I've been a little out of it lately with
other projects but here we are again. Here's the
thing: I've been trying to create an indoor level
using TS. I want to use one of those 3D programming
languages to create a 3D virtual building. Not a
building... my house to be exact. The problem is, I
am having trouble making the doors. Here's how I'm
doing it: first I draw all the rooms using the Cube
primitive. Then I shell them out using the Shell
Object tool. Then I draw more cube primitives and
place them where the doors will be, and subtract them.
The problem is that, since the room cubes are shelled
out, sometimes the "inner cube" faces don't disappear.
I tried erasing the faces with the Delete Face Tool,
but it didn't work either. Because the doors are
inside the rooms, I have to move the camera real close
in order to work with the internal faces. When I do
this, either the Delete Face Tool doesn't work or TS
hangs. I tried scaling the level so the rooms would
be bigger, but now it takes forever to move the camera
to the place I want.
My question is: has anyone here done this kind of
thing and could offer some advice on how to proceed?
With the process I'm doing, it takes me about an hour
to make a single good door. I'm thinking there must be
an easier way to do it. If anyone can offer any
advice, I would be very grateful. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Omar
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