TGEA Cliff Construction Kit coming soon...
by Konrad Kiss · 10/29/2008 (3:41 am) · 10 comments
It's been a while since my last .plan, so I figured it was time to show what I've been up to. The game I am working on - Xenocell - has a huge outdoors environment - it's a rocky alien planet. For me it was vital to create cliffs and overhangs that are realistic, highly detailed and require little resources. I set out to find a solution that can handle massive amounts of cliffs within the game, and thus the TGEA Cliff Construction Kit was born.
Hero
At the pier
Melting icebergs in Stronghold Bay
As I started experimenting with cliffs, I realized the following:
- DTS statics are probably my best bet
- I didn't want to waste time switching from creator to editor to set basic parameters (shape, texture, specular settings) when placing cliffs
- I wanted to procedurally place my cliffs - a'la fxShapeReplicator - except with more options that apply for large cliffs - ie. cover hills, block mission area.
Finally, after working on it for a few weeks, these are the Kit's features:
- 15 base shapes * 30 textures = 450 unique cliffs
- New class for cliffs derived from TSStatic - TSBGCliffStatic
- Receives dynamic lights and shadows, casts static shadows, receives ambient lighting and shade through a new, sun occlusion based approach instead of the old "get color from below" one
- Quick placement and modification through on-the-fly textures and specular presets from within the creator
- DDS textures with 10 pregenerated mipmaps to avoid distance blurring
- Highly realistic bump and specular maps also come with pre-generated mipmaps
- Relies on polysoup for collisions and static shadows if needed - no collision mesh
- Low memory footprint through material swapping instead of using 450 different objects
- Unique cliff replicator:
- Presets tailored to cliffs
- Use of creator textures and modifiers on selected replicator is possible, applying texture and modifiers to all replicas
- Min / max terrain slope
- Polysoup switch
- Clustering
- Restriction to surface type
- Place along missionarea borders
- Define several shapes to pick from
- Define several textures to pick from
Let me know what you think of it, I'm curious if this is something people here would want as a content pack.
-- Konrad
Edit 2008-10-29: Added new screenshots.
Hero
At the pier
Melting icebergs in Stronghold Bay
As I started experimenting with cliffs, I realized the following:
- DTS statics are probably my best bet
- I didn't want to waste time switching from creator to editor to set basic parameters (shape, texture, specular settings) when placing cliffs
- I wanted to procedurally place my cliffs - a'la fxShapeReplicator - except with more options that apply for large cliffs - ie. cover hills, block mission area.
Finally, after working on it for a few weeks, these are the Kit's features:
- 15 base shapes * 30 textures = 450 unique cliffs
- New class for cliffs derived from TSStatic - TSBGCliffStatic
- Receives dynamic lights and shadows, casts static shadows, receives ambient lighting and shade through a new, sun occlusion based approach instead of the old "get color from below" one
- Quick placement and modification through on-the-fly textures and specular presets from within the creator
- DDS textures with 10 pregenerated mipmaps to avoid distance blurring
- Highly realistic bump and specular maps also come with pre-generated mipmaps
- Relies on polysoup for collisions and static shadows if needed - no collision mesh
- Low memory footprint through material swapping instead of using 450 different objects
- Unique cliff replicator:
- Presets tailored to cliffs
- Use of creator textures and modifiers on selected replicator is possible, applying texture and modifiers to all replicas
- Min / max terrain slope
- Polysoup switch
- Clustering
- Restriction to surface type
- Place along missionarea borders
- Define several shapes to pick from
- Define several textures to pick from
Let me know what you think of it, I'm curious if this is something people here would want as a content pack.
-- Konrad
Edit 2008-10-29: Added new screenshots.
About the author
Lead Developer at Bitgap Games (www.bitgap.com) currently working on Xenocell (www.xenocell.com) a massively multiplayer action strategy game based on Torque 3D technology.
#3
10/29/2008 (5:58 am)
sweet! :) 
#5
10/29/2008 (7:32 am)
yes, definitely could use this 
#6
10/29/2008 (7:44 am)
Very, very cool Konrad! 
#8
I'll need to create some example scenes for the documentation and videos before releasing the Kit - hopefully till the end of this week. I'll keep you updated, and will post further info & videos here until the release.
Thanks for the comments. Let me know if there are any questions about the kit, or if you'd like to see a specific feature in it that was not mentioned in my .plan.
10/29/2008 (10:54 am)
Thanks guys, I think I can take that as positive feedback. :) I'll need to create some example scenes for the documentation and videos before releasing the Kit - hopefully till the end of this week. I'll keep you updated, and will post further info & videos here until the release.
Thanks for the comments. Let me know if there are any questions about the kit, or if you'd like to see a specific feature in it that was not mentioned in my .plan.
#9
10/29/2008 (2:07 pm)
I really wanted to make another screenshot, so I played around in Stronghold with the replicator and speculars. Updated plan, added new screenshots. 
#10
10/30/2008 (2:13 am)
This sounds really cool.
Torque 3D Owner Dave Young
Dave Young Games