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Why can't it be so simple?

Name:	Donald Teal
Date Posted:	Mar 28, 2007
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Things have majorly slowed down in regards to Valhyre. One major issue has been just getting all the legal mumbo jumbo out of the way. And now with that taken care of we have been able to turn our attention to actual work.

One of the main area's we are working on now is the implementation of structures into the test environment. Now I know most of you are thinking Sturctures are easy! Just load up Quark, or CS or anyone of the other BSP creators and let the juices flow. Well for us its not so simple. You see we have over 1000 pre-exisiting structures that were created for a different project and all were done in 3ds Max. Our castles, our houses, caves, dungeons, were all done in Max. Recreating them in another program would be cost prohibative.

On the simple structures we have found a slight workaround but its not idea. As seen here

We have received lots of advice on the "best way" to approach it but unfortunately none have worked for us so far. We know there has to be a way that will allow us to use the assets we have even if its not as good as redoing everything by hand. We can live with imperfect. Its much better than not at all.

The upside to everything is that while we worked on getting the structures lined out. We have been able to get other things worked out. such as Full flight abilities for the bastlurs, aging mechanisms to allow the bastlurs to age and grow over time as well as our complete line of weapons into the engine.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	03/28/07 - Why can't it be so simple? 02/16/06 - New information released 01/07/06 - Valhyre start

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Zod (Mar 28, 2007 at 18:41 GMT)

If the structures don;t have to be entered into I would just export them as DTS with LOD. IF you do have to enter them then really your only viable option is to redo them Quark etc, unless there is a 3ds to map converter in which case you'll save "some" pain.

Ed Johnson (Mar 28, 2007 at 21:37 GMT)

So the workaround is.... what?

Are you using DTS shapes without collision..

DTS shapes with collision (possible, but slower),

or converted over to a BSP (DIF)?

Steve Flowers (Mar 28, 2007 at 21:39 GMT)

Looks like there will be 'some' rework. But would this help?:
[url]http://www.maple3d.com/MainFrameGLB3Page.htm[\url]

Steve
Edited on Mar 28, 2007 22:36 GMT

Thak (Mar 28, 2007 at 23:42 GMT)

Sent you an email about the model. I reckon this could be a solution:
www.garagegames.com/blogs/8863/11953
seems like the best option with those models.

Steve Flowers (Mar 29, 2007 at 01:09 GMT)

semi-good for TSE/GEA - not so worky in TGE. Polysoup seems cool though:)

Dave Calabrese (Mar 29, 2007 at 03:55 GMT)

Try implementing a physics engine (such as ODE) into your project. Then you can have controlled polysoup collision using DTS models, which can either use the actual mesh of your DTS or (more ideal), have a special collision mesh in the model. This works fine in TGE as ODE has already been implemented into that engine.

Good luck!

-Dave Calabrese
21-6 Productions

Donald Teal (Mar 29, 2007 at 14:35 GMT)

Dave, could you expand on that a bit more? I am not up to speed on ODE, would you mind enlightening me?

Dave Calabrese (Mar 29, 2007 at 15:24 GMT)

I've never implemented a physics engine, only utilized them, so I'm not really the one to ask on 'how' to do this. The 'why' it works, however, is that TGE, by default, has a simplified rigid body physics engine that is not designed for complex physics interactions. It is designed to very efficiently collide with convex only objects, which is exactly what BPS interior models are, and are designed for. Torque was also never really designed to use DTS meshes as the environment. However, by swapping out the physics engine with a much more complex one - such as ODE, Havok, PhysX, or any other one, then all this changes as you can now have very complex interactions, and DTS based scenery and worlds become possible.

I'd suggest reading up about the engines, possibly contacting their individual designers (ODE is free and open source, so if you are a small studio you might want to start there), and discussing this more in detail with them.

TDN Article on ODE: http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Physics/ODE

Donald Teal (Mar 29, 2007 at 15:48 GMT)

Thanks for that info Dave,

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