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Poker Chips and Polygon Soup
Poker Chips and Polygon Soup
| Name: | Gerald Fishel | |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | May 29, 2006 | |
| Rating: |  5.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Gerald Fishel |
Blog post
Greetings!
This is my first blog post here.
I have been involved with Torque technologies for a couple of years now, done some consulting and contract work for some games that have used TGE, and did some things for personal entertainment that cost me hundreds of hours of productivty, and a girlfriend or two, muahahaha.
Currently, I have 2 projects going on of interest.
One is a single/multiplayer Texas Hold 'Em game that is right around the corner from beta (that sucker was supposed to be here last month, but it keeps stopping at the pub and hitting on the ladies), using the fabulous new Torque Game Builder. More details about this will be coming very soon.
Additionally, a couple partners and myself have just finished a design specification for a new 3D game of a top secret nature (I'd tell you more about the nature of the game, but I'd have to frag you.)
A while back I developed a new interior rendering system for TGE that allowed for modelling of highly detailed portalized polygon soup interiors in 3D Studio Max, using pre-baked radiosity (or other) lighting solutions. I have gotten quite a few emails of late asking about this system and if I would share it. Unforunately, 2 very serious catastrophes befell this poor, dear old code: 1) a catastrophic hard drive failure, and 2) a catastrophic developer failure to keep good backups. I have found one of the earliest versions, but that spaghetti code is not fit for consumption; I don't want to get fined by the FDA for handing out 0xbaadf00d.
However! As a part of the new ubertopsecrethavetofragyaifitellya project, I have a need for .... you guessed it... highly detailed portalized polygon soup interior levels that can be modelled entirely in 3D Studio Max (and Maya this time!). Boy, what a great idea it was to spend the money for the automatic backup system on beer and Enron stock!
Annnnyway.... since I am a really nice guy (really, it has nothing to do with me loving this stuff), I have delegated this task for myself. And, since I have gotten quite a bit of support from the Torque community in the past, and TGE, TSE and TGB have all been outstanding values for me, I have decided that I will develop this system as a pluggable package that can be easily integrated with any TGE or TSE project with minimal effort. Also, it will be made available to all TGE and TSE license holders for the everyday low price of... zero dollars. Yes, that's right... zero, zilch, nada, nothing, none, zilch. (I said zilch twice, but I really like that word.) Our primary goal is TSE and integration with it's wonderfully exciting material system, but since the actual rendering part of it should be pretty straightforward and easily abstractable, I will be including support for TGE as well. I suspect that I will have to use 2 seperate versions when distributing to others, to avoid being persecuted for licensing issues, but that shouldn't be a problem.
At this point, it's too early to come up with a timetable, but since the doctor told me I only have 80 years to live, I shall proceed with the utmost haste!
Until next time...
This is my first blog post here.
I have been involved with Torque technologies for a couple of years now, done some consulting and contract work for some games that have used TGE, and did some things for personal entertainment that cost me hundreds of hours of productivty, and a girlfriend or two, muahahaha.
Currently, I have 2 projects going on of interest.
One is a single/multiplayer Texas Hold 'Em game that is right around the corner from beta (that sucker was supposed to be here last month, but it keeps stopping at the pub and hitting on the ladies), using the fabulous new Torque Game Builder. More details about this will be coming very soon.
Additionally, a couple partners and myself have just finished a design specification for a new 3D game of a top secret nature (I'd tell you more about the nature of the game, but I'd have to frag you.)
A while back I developed a new interior rendering system for TGE that allowed for modelling of highly detailed portalized polygon soup interiors in 3D Studio Max, using pre-baked radiosity (or other) lighting solutions. I have gotten quite a few emails of late asking about this system and if I would share it. Unforunately, 2 very serious catastrophes befell this poor, dear old code: 1) a catastrophic hard drive failure, and 2) a catastrophic developer failure to keep good backups. I have found one of the earliest versions, but that spaghetti code is not fit for consumption; I don't want to get fined by the FDA for handing out 0xbaadf00d.
However! As a part of the new ubertopsecrethavetofragyaifitellya project, I have a need for .... you guessed it... highly detailed portalized polygon soup interior levels that can be modelled entirely in 3D Studio Max (and Maya this time!). Boy, what a great idea it was to spend the money for the automatic backup system on beer and Enron stock!
Annnnyway.... since I am a really nice guy (really, it has nothing to do with me loving this stuff), I have delegated this task for myself. And, since I have gotten quite a bit of support from the Torque community in the past, and TGE, TSE and TGB have all been outstanding values for me, I have decided that I will develop this system as a pluggable package that can be easily integrated with any TGE or TSE project with minimal effort. Also, it will be made available to all TGE and TSE license holders for the everyday low price of... zero dollars. Yes, that's right... zero, zilch, nada, nothing, none, zilch. (I said zilch twice, but I really like that word.) Our primary goal is TSE and integration with it's wonderfully exciting material system, but since the actual rendering part of it should be pretty straightforward and easily abstractable, I will be including support for TGE as well. I suspect that I will have to use 2 seperate versions when distributing to others, to avoid being persecuted for licensing issues, but that shouldn't be a problem.
At this point, it's too early to come up with a timetable, but since the doctor told me I only have 80 years to live, I shall proceed with the utmost haste!
Until next time...
Submit your own resources!| Jesse (Midhir) Liles (May 29, 2006 at 07:29 GMT) |
| Paul /*Wedge*/ DElia (May 29, 2006 at 07:35 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Wow really?
| Jeff Gran (May 29, 2006 at 18:51 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (May 29, 2006 at 18:58 GMT) |
| Gerald Fishel (May 29, 2006 at 20:18 GMT) |
Edited on May 29, 2006 20:26 GMT
| Gerald Fishel (May 29, 2006 at 20:47 GMT) |
I spent the morning going through my old spaghetti code, and went to make sure that all of the concepts still applied to the 1.4 base. So I took an old scene I purchased from Turbo Squid, loaded it in Max, threw in an Athene statue, added a couple lights to test the baking, exported it, and loaded it into a TGE mission file, and walla:
It's not a good scene for portals and such, and one (except for the statue) that you could do with BSPs, but it's a fairly high poly scene, and exported directly from Max, with per-poly collision detection working efficiently. I will be refactoring the whole thing, since I've learned oodles since I've done that, but just wanted to make sure the premises still stood.
BTW, I forgot to mention that it will also work with the excellent Torque Lighting Kit.
| Paul /*Wedge*/ DElia (May 30, 2006 at 02:44 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Neil Marshall (May 30, 2006 at 20:15 GMT) |
Does the level still take 10 minutes to load?
| Gerald Fishel (May 30, 2006 at 20:42 GMT) |
Yeah, the old code still takes a while, depending on the level :p
Actually one of the primary considerations in my refactoring is going to be support for a streaming resource management model, so that you don't have to load 10 gazillion triangles and 4 terabytes of textures into memory at once. It will just load the exterior polys and materials, and any interior polys and textures that can be seen from the outside, until it becomes necessary to start loading other resources.
I'm looking at scenarios where I will need potentially a hundred or more interior rooms, with high poly counts in each room, and loading them all at once just won't do.
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