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Newbie Question - Moving Interiors in Torque?

by James McKenzie · in Torque Game Engine · 01/24/2005 (3:43 am) · 37 replies

Hi all,
I've been a member of Garagegames for quite a while now, but never thought about using Torque for my games. Until now...

I have a great idea for a game, (as we all do!) but I'm wondering if it will be possible in Torque. From what I understand about the engine, indoor environments are BSP rendered, and static lightmapped by the engine. This seems pretty cool for doing both indoor and outdoor environments, but I plan on "moving" buildings. As an example, say I want to do a huge spaceship or hovership or standard floating ship, that can fly or move around a map, and players can see it, but you can also wander around inside the ship while it's moving. Can this be done?

If I understand correctly, I would need an indoor environment for something like this, but the problem is the lighting on buildings is done statically, so it wouldn't look very good if the "building" was moving around. Would it be possible to do something like this using standard object models, (maybe double sided and not backfaced culled,) but that would probably require writing a whole slew of code for things like gravity and wall collision, etc, basically re-creating the indoor portion of the Torque engine?

What about having different game levels, and when the user enters a ship from the outside environment, they load into a new level inside the ship? This would probably be the easiest, but it wouldn't provide support for things such as windows would it?

Can anyone help me? Is this going to be possible? If it is, can it be done with minimal change to the Torque engine? I imagine the reason you haven't seen many games with this sort of feature is that it is hard to code.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
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#1
01/24/2005 (3:57 am)
There are two threads about this (here and there) whith one guy claiming that he managed to acchieve something like that - he even introduces an impressive video with a flying hut.
#2
01/24/2005 (4:20 am)
Well, it's all about cheating anyway, isn't it? I think the easiest solution would be to load a new mission when you enter the craft, then have some kind of props flying around outside the windows.
#3
01/24/2005 (4:52 pm)
Thanks for the help guys.

Dick: I can't get to those threads, they're in a private forum as I don't have Torque. Do you think you could provide the link to that video?

Hans: That's what I was thinking about doing.

Anyone else got any ideas?
#4
01/24/2005 (9:52 pm)
The video for a limited time due to bandwidth reasons.
#5
01/25/2005 (3:24 am)
I got side-tracked a little this weekend and decided to tackle the problem of allowing the player to ride a PathShape (a dts that moves around an editable path).

www.rustycode.com/matt/pathshape1.wmv

There are still a few minor-ish bugs to fix but the proof of concept is solid. I am hoping that I can get this solid enough in time for 1.4 =)
#6
01/25/2005 (3:33 am)
Wow! very nice! And the DTS even throws shadows, did I see that right?
#7
01/25/2005 (5:21 am)
Yeah, wow Matthew - cool stuff.
#8
01/25/2005 (5:56 am)
Wow, that's pretty cool Matthew.
Few questions though, does it have shadows and correct lighting?
Also, since I'm not familar with Torque, is it possible to take a "dts" object, (sorry, not awesomely familar,) and make it not follow a path, i.e: user controlled like a spaceship?

If it can, this might be the solution I'm looking for, and Torque the engine of choice! :)
#9
01/26/2005 (4:30 am)
Yes, it is casts and receives shdows correctly (I have the player casting shadow onto the platform turned off in the videos b/c of a few artifacts I need to take a look at first).

James,
Yes, in theory the code I wrote should be applicable to all shape-derived objets. I chose the PathShape stuff as a bass b/c it has a very low memory/physics footprint. Before I am done with it, I will attempt to generalize it enough so that you can ride on any moving shape (within reason).
#10
01/26/2005 (7:03 am)
@Matt - So could this maybe be used to do triggered doors and platforms instead of pathed interiors? Is there a benifit to using this over pathed interiors (other than it working in HEAD and shadows)?
#11
01/26/2005 (7:52 am)
Excellent, thanks Matthew for the info, I think Torque is a go!
Now where did I put my credit card... :-)
#12
01/28/2005 (3:53 pm)
Tom,
The techniques I am using should be usable for pathed shapes, animated collision meshes, ridable vehicles (think space ship or boat), or moving interior pieces
#13
01/28/2005 (4:07 pm)
@Matt - Wow... that would rock. We could use the ability to do some moving of an interior.
#14
04/15/2005 (7:52 am)
Wow that was cool

the ogre stayed on it while moving, how did you make it do that? like what is the concept, is it that sceneObject mounting stuff ben posted on another thread?
#15
04/15/2005 (6:54 pm)
It is similar to the mounting code in that I use the transform of the object I am "riding" to determine the position of the player. The difference is that I am also updating an "offset" from this position using the Move code in the Player class which is why the player can actually walk around on the platform. I found this to be the most network friendly way of doing it in Torque given the current path code (it doesn't back tick). This technique works pretty well with a few minor problems like handling when the player loses "contact" with the shape it is riding. Once I have everything straightened out and production ready (really solid) I will roll it out but I am burning most of my time on Constructor right now so it may be a little while yet.
#16
04/15/2005 (11:18 pm)
O-o - the 'C' word.

You do your best to keep this thread alive. Did someone say map2dif, yet? :-) You sure do have a heavy load. And here I thought I was busy with my two and a half projects ...
#17
04/19/2005 (7:13 am)
Hi All, Great post. Has anyone worked out how to do interiors for large moving dts's? I'm not sure what the best method is to use?
Cheers
Mal
#18
05/07/2005 (5:01 pm)
How long till this is ready, or untill TGE 1.4 is out. Im really looking forward to it.
#19
06/17/2005 (8:14 am)
I'm very interested in this, but I have a long way to go before I introduce large capital ships into my game...

Matthew,
Any chance this made it into TGE 1.4? Or will this be released as a resource?
Thanks!
#20
08/16/2005 (3:24 pm)
Ok so how is the progress going Matt?
I was wondering when this is going to be available, and is this in the HEAD?
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