Bonus question: what are your thoughts on (glass) windows in houses? I was first thinking of making them destroyable and letting the player look through them, but I now realize that they make it more difficult too (with regions and looking through windows and more complex models).
I would split each building into 3 part types,
1
Exterior base
exterior level
exterior roof
2
Interior layout.
3
Interior auto-floor.
Use say 1-5 exterior bases - First floor from outside - inlcude reverse walls.
Each ex base has 1-5 level version - second-xth floors from outside, with reverses inside walls.
- And 1-5 roof versions.
Then move inside and drop in 1-5 inside layouts, inner walls, rooms, chairs, beds ect.. Each inside level will not have a floor/ceiling.
The base ex provides a floor plane. But each interior auto creates a two sided ceiling/floor plan for the level about(even if only one level building)
The auto floor/ceiling should have 1-5 version that can be change by value or flag and also if wanted 1-5 textures that can be changed this way.
, this is very helpfull tnx.
One final note for workflow to production. It would be great if the work done in the editor was exported out into one model structure file, that could be loaded in the production game. This way all the configuration is in the editor and the product doesn't need the extra bits and options.
, I will use it with physx for some interior things, but its a nice idea perhaps for in the future to e.g. re-use older/currently made maps (or pieces of maps) in other engines.
Finally, Through a model in parts -> I believe -> hit.chuck values can with vmask to allow visibility into the building as if setting separate entities to alpha 0..
, that's handy to know.
Few days ago i buyed some nice houses with indoor modeling for only 30$ btw. If u want to have good performance a lot of tricks must be done ( like no faces below the floor etc, a hollowed block exported to mdl isnt a good solution ). Just want to say building such models (rendering fast) isnt a easy task grin
If you using shadeC reset the dynamic flag of the houses later, if not your framerate will "Crash" ^^
With those indoor "and" outdoor maps u must really use every trick available ( LOD...... )
edit: Good News is it seams to be possible with high fps ( i recognized in "Setting up shadec evo" thread ).
, good tips. I will try to mainly model/texture the buildings and simple interior models self etc, all low/mid poly (cause its easier to model low/mid poly anyway), only textures will be bit of a problem. Though I am thinking of regions (just 1 per house should be suffice) that detect if a player is near or not and if not dont show many details like interior.
In the screen shot above there are clearly rooms that are none visible to the current view position. I believe--> Using regions skips the step of the engine deciding if a area should be culled. Thus speeding the render.
, automatic culling of area's only work with blocks in WED compiled maps right? So I think regions (and camera clip.far ofcourse) are probably needed anyway.
, tnx! After 3 months of work and planning I now almost have a solid framework and most of the basics (incl. player control, physx, AI with pathing, item usage and some rpg elements etc.). Hopefully after a short time I can create a project thread to show some pics and such.
