Creating levels without terrain
by Jason Tilley · in Torque Game Engine · 01/01/2006 (4:52 am) · 4 replies
Hi,
I was just reading some of the documentation that has a little bit of info about how Marble Blast was created. They originally started off with racing on terrain then changed and got rid of the terrain and used dif-formatted geometry for the levels.
Couple of questions:
1. How would one create dif-formatted geometry with relative ease? Is there a recommended program that can create these? Is it simple to import them into Torque? Can they be created within Torque is that a part of the functionality of Constructor?
2. Would these be a good way of creating levels/maps that are based on interiors (ie. they are inside with no view to the sky or outside)? Can this be used to create top down 3d games?
3. How does one actually remove the terrain?
Thanks
Jason
I was just reading some of the documentation that has a little bit of info about how Marble Blast was created. They originally started off with racing on terrain then changed and got rid of the terrain and used dif-formatted geometry for the levels.
Couple of questions:
1. How would one create dif-formatted geometry with relative ease? Is there a recommended program that can create these? Is it simple to import them into Torque? Can they be created within Torque is that a part of the functionality of Constructor?
2. Would these be a good way of creating levels/maps that are based on interiors (ie. they are inside with no view to the sky or outside)? Can this be used to create top down 3d games?
3. How does one actually remove the terrain?
Thanks
Jason
About the author
#2
ad 2. Yes.
ad 3. You can remove the terrain by editing the .mis file and delete the terrain section.
01/01/2006 (6:21 am)
Ad 1. This is widely discussed throughout the forum. The recommended tool is Quark for the moment, with Constructor in develeopment. Others use 3D World Studio EA.ad 2. Yes.
ad 3. You can remove the terrain by editing the .mis file and delete the terrain section.
#3
01/01/2006 (2:55 pm)
(Note: a few things might crash if you delete the terrain. They are hardcoded to assume the terrain must exist. Just add an if() statement to check if the terrain pointer they're manipulating is NULL or not and skip if it is, and you'll be set.) 
#4
01/01/2006 (7:53 pm)
I think it was Phil Carlisle who was working on a space-based game a couple years ago (could be wrong). He may be able to answer your questions about terrain removal.
Torque Owner Mike Fosker