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About the Terrain limits....

by Johnny Hill · in Torque Game Engine · 05/05/2003 (8:59 pm) · 4 replies

Hi, Everyone

New to Torque.

Could procedural techniques be adapted to the torque engine. Or because of the core design of the engine you cant change the way it creates terrain since its just level loading.

Iam having a time choosing between using Torque or the Nebula Device. The one thing I like with Nebula is Iam not restricted to using its core classes but can create my own.

Torque is a like complete running car with a stock engine you can customize and accessorize.

TND is like the engine, but you still need to build a body and then customize and accesorize.

anyway that my take on it. Any input is appreciated thanks. :)
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Torque Owner J. Donavan Stanley
#1
05/06/2003 (2:53 am)
The Torque Terrain editor has numerous procedural effects for generating the terrain heightmap. Beyond that it is possbile to do modify the engine to use larger terrain, it's just not trivial. However patches like the TerrainManager patch (which allows for any arbitrary size terrain as long as it's a power of 256) help smooth the road.

Torque Owner Johnny Hill
#2
05/06/2003 (8:52 am)
Thanks for the reply Mr. Donavan

I been experimenting with the ROAM procedural functions. And also getting advice and tips from some of the guys who live and breath procedural programming.

Basically Iam trying to make a level that is on the scale of a small planet. I know the key factor is memory.

Since I dont know the nuts and bolts of torque guess I need to get my 100 dollars ready heh because I need to check out that terrain manger.

Thanks again.

Torque 3D Owner Ted Southard
#3
05/06/2003 (9:57 am)
Hell, you can do that by hand, if you don't mind spending the time making that heightfield(takes me about a week to do a map about 1/3 the size of Anarchy Online's). With the Terrain Manager(which Mr. Stanley is working on), you can load the multiple heightmaps into the game, and have your planet.

Of course, it depends on what you want. If you want the terrain done quickly, fractals are the way to go. If you want very specific terrain, then hand-painting is probably better, or a combination of the two for anything in-between.

Do a search for Pandrameda if you havent already and check that app out. It exports heightfields, and supports manual editing to some extent(not sure how much).

Torque Owner Johnny Hill
#4
05/06/2003 (12:28 pm)
:) Thanks Mr. Southard

I think I will go at by hand, I already know what I want the terrain to look like. If I can't get the procedural part going real-time I can create my maps procedurally tweak them and just load em up.

after I finishing that, I know I want to tackle clouds. I seen the skyworks code, and look at some of Mr. Mel's great contributions so Iam surprise realistic looking clouds havent popped up yet. :)

thanks again.