Getting flying vehicles into the game
by SpaceCowboy · in Torque Game Engine · 05/02/2005 (9:30 am) · 5 replies
Ok, I've been looking around a lot on how to make my own vehicles and import them as the player model. Here are the best of what I've found
http://tork.beffy.de/tutorials/vehicles/index.htm
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5071
3D Game Programming All In One ( creating your own vehicle: which looks to be wrong, calling the collision mesh "Collision-1" instead of "Col-1", does it matter?)
I'm working in 3DSMax 7. So far, I can export my model to a DTS file that shows up in "show", but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to import it into a real game. The closest I've come so far is taking the resource file from above, flyer_new.max, deleting their vehicle mesh, and importing my own, then exporting this as the flyer.dts. I can get a third person view out of this.
When I try to replicate their scene graph with all the dummy nodes in my original max file, my model will not work as the flyer.dts model. When in game, I can fly around with no collision detection (inspite of having a collision mesh named "col-1" with a parent of "start01"), and I can only fly around in first person. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Is there a better resource to use?
What about the BraveTree Warsparrow pack? Is this better than the resources I've been using? Does it come with some tutorial on how to get a custom model into the game yourself?
Let me know if you need any more information, because I've tried about everything I can think of.
SpaceCowboy
http://tork.beffy.de/tutorials/vehicles/index.htm
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5071
3D Game Programming All In One ( creating your own vehicle: which looks to be wrong, calling the collision mesh "Collision-1" instead of "Col-1", does it matter?)
I'm working in 3DSMax 7. So far, I can export my model to a DTS file that shows up in "show", but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to import it into a real game. The closest I've come so far is taking the resource file from above, flyer_new.max, deleting their vehicle mesh, and importing my own, then exporting this as the flyer.dts. I can get a third person view out of this.
When I try to replicate their scene graph with all the dummy nodes in my original max file, my model will not work as the flyer.dts model. When in game, I can fly around with no collision detection (inspite of having a collision mesh named "col-1" with a parent of "start01"), and I can only fly around in first person. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Is there a better resource to use?
What about the BraveTree Warsparrow pack? Is this better than the resources I've been using? Does it come with some tutorial on how to get a custom model into the game yourself?
Let me know if you need any more information, because I've tried about everything I can think of.
SpaceCowboy
About the author
#2
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4273
Plus do a search on resources using 'dts', you'll find more info.
05/04/2005 (4:36 pm)
Check this doc out, it may help you immenselyhttp://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4273
Plus do a search on resources using 'dts', you'll find more info.
#3
One thing that I noticed in the milkshape model provided on the disk is that there is no bone/node hierarchy, they're all seperate.
Martin
05/04/2005 (4:51 pm)
I'm not sure if this is what you want to do, but I've managed, with the all in one book to modify the runabout.dts car that is provided (as a milkshape model) with the book together with the wheels and race around the racing demo with my model and collision detection seemingly working fine. I did this via milkshape but I can check it out with MAX too if you'd like, I don't know a lot about MAX so I may need some help ?One thing that I noticed in the milkshape model provided on the disk is that there is no bone/node hierarchy, they're all seperate.
Martin
#4
Martin, I can open up warsparrow or the flyernew.max, delete the mesh object there, and import my object into the max scene, then use the exporter to export it into the game, and everything is fine (well, mostly, but the other problems I see, I've seen addressed around here before). The trouble I run into is when I try to make something from scratch. So most likely, I've got something in the heirarchy wrong.
I'm going to read the pdf document that Dee linked me to and see if I can catch any problems from that. If that fails, I guess I'll launch through a debugger and try to find out where it is crashing and why, and work backwards from there.
SpaceCowboy
05/05/2005 (8:31 am)
Good idea on searching for "dts". I've been limiting my search to "vehicles" and "flying" for the most part. Martin, I can open up warsparrow or the flyernew.max, delete the mesh object there, and import my object into the max scene, then use the exporter to export it into the game, and everything is fine (well, mostly, but the other problems I see, I've seen addressed around here before). The trouble I run into is when I try to make something from scratch. So most likely, I've got something in the heirarchy wrong.
I'm going to read the pdf document that Dee linked me to and see if I can catch any problems from that. If that fails, I guess I'll launch through a debugger and try to find out where it is crashing and why, and work backwards from there.
SpaceCowboy
#5
SpaceCowboy
05/05/2005 (1:00 pm)
Well, I just spent several hours with no luck. This has been bothering me for a week or so of on again off again research into the problem. The best I can currently do is just use the files in some of the tutorials and delete the collision and mesh objects, and insert my own. Would anyone be willing to look over the max file (3DSMax7)? You can email me at blrow@hotmail.com.SpaceCowboy
Torque Owner SpaceCowboy
My goal is to create a flying box (brick whatever), to demonstrate that I can create a flying vehicle from scratch and get it in the game. So I opened the flyernew.max from the resource listed above. Then, I recreated all the dummy nodes in my max file as was in the flyernew.max. I link everything so that in the scene graph:
mass and bounds are at the top level with no children
base01 is at the top level and has children start01, collision-1, detail02
start01 has children mount0, mount1, eye, cam, box02 (the actual model), col-1.
When I export everything is fine. It shows up in TorqueDemo -show. I then copy it over as "flyer.dts", and try to load the flying demo. As soon as it gets done loading the objects, the program hangs.
Meanwhile, if I just take the flyernew.max, export it, everything works fine. There are some yellow boxes in the schematic view that I don't have replicated, but I don't know what these objects are. I don't think they are dummy objects or real mesh objects.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
SpaceCowboy