Can torque do this
by Thomas Macadam · in Torque Game Engine · 02/19/2006 (8:36 pm) · 6 replies
Hi, I am new to this forum and don't if this the right place to ask this but here goes...I recently found a game call Infinity, now the most amazing thing about this game so far (at least I think) is the engine for it. The engine uses procedural programming and allows you to go from the surface of a full sized planet to outer space seamlessly, no loading transition or anything it's just completely smooth from planet to space or space to planet. I was wondering if TGE or TSE could do this because I am interested in making an online futuristic massive multiplayer FPS in which planet would be huge and people could go into space to have dog fights in space or someone could go into orbit and circle the planet and find a specific place and fly down to it. If anyone could give me an answer for this that would be greatly appreciated, Thanks for your time goodbye.
Link/address for infinity game
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/
Link/address for infinity game
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/
#2
02/20/2006 (3:07 pm)
Well, I suppose it would depend on far out into space you would want to go. If you are talking from planet to planet well then that would be difficult, but just into space wouldnt be so bad if you could deal with not having clouds on your planet :)
#3
02/20/2006 (7:32 pm)
Well it would cool if people could go from one planet to another, but it they could just go into space a bit that would be cool and also i was wondering if i did this with TSE or TGE if it would just crash the game or make it go extremely slow because it would put so much stress on it trying to run it all, even with streaming it 
#4
02/20/2006 (7:40 pm)
Personally, I'd use a theora movie to create a "flying transition" between planet and space. It would substitute as a "loading screen" without the "loading" text. Just make sure that the beginning and end of the transition matches up.
#5
02/20/2006 (7:44 pm)
That would be a good idea, until i made good enough code to allow the transition between space and the planet actually work well
#6
To allow for curved/spherical terrain, I would imagine you would need to add some form of vector-based local gravity, even if the spaceships did not actually land on the planet surfaces. Maybe one of the various add-on physics libraries would help with that.
02/21/2006 (8:20 am)
The main problem with trying to allow for seamless transitions from a planet surface to space is that planets are spherical and most engines have flat terrain as that makes it easier to implement gravity.To allow for curved/spherical terrain, I would imagine you would need to add some form of vector-based local gravity, even if the spaceships did not actually land on the planet surfaces. Maybe one of the various add-on physics libraries would help with that.
Associate David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
Just like with any engine.
That's not so much a stock feature with any engine that I know of. Most will work through it by culling LOD and streaming in data. But it's difficult to create something so specific (which seems so general conceptually). It is much easier to work with culling zone edges. Creating a zone-navigation/zooming feature would be an interesting exercise.
but it would be one that I wouldn't want to do.