How to build a city in gta

#1 James,
familiarize yourself with Constructor. You can do a city with it. It's not my first choice, but it's free so it's a good place to start. I usually work in 3D World Studio then do the final export for TGE or TGEA with Constructor since I can check my texture alignments with it and I know that in general if it loads and looks right in Constructor, it will work in engine.

To kind of emphasis that I'm not just saying this, here are a couple of screens from our updated "Downtown District" Pack that includes a basic city block template:



And here is a short video with our favorite orc running around and shooting buildings (its a Divx codec btw):

www.reallyreallygoodthings.com/resources/cityBlock.avi

If you are trying to use DTS objects for this (which I wouldn't probably recommend btw, since I'm still not sold on the look of polysoup mesh objects and such), make sure your collision mesh is named "collision-1, or col-1 or some value with a negative number, then it won't render in engine.

Hope this helps.
Alan
Really Really Good Things Studio

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#2 That looks really good.yes i have 100s of city buildings in dts format.i have 1000s of models ive built to look as real as a real building and you can walk through it like a read motel,but thats alot of dif models you have to use to build a real like building.halflife 2 levels are all built together as one,or they are as one when i load them in gamespace.whats up with that????why cant i build a whole level with,houses and terrain and so on like halflife and make it work in tge???????????????????????????????????

#3 You can build a whole level with houses, buildings streets and such like Half-Life and Half-Life2 for Torque using Constructor, since both Torque and HL/HL2 are using CSG/BSP based objects for there architecture. In fact it's interesting that you mention HL2 because it's one of the titles in particular I think of when I think of .MAP based level construction. That's pretty much what the Valve Hammer editor is all about.

As far as I know, Gamespace/Truespace is only going to export DTS/mesh based objects, unless of course I missed it somewhere and it does .MAP objects...but I don't think so. DTS objects are mesh based like .X, .3DS, .OBJ, etc. and collision meshes are required for each brush that you want to collide with, unless you either a) using TGEA 1.7 B1 or B2 which includes polysoup collision or b) integrate Ben Garney's polysoup resource into TGE 1.5.2.

If you have 100s of buildings in DTS format, I would genuinely suggest looking at integrating the polysoup resource into your TGE build. But I can tell you that HL/HL2 did not use mesh based buildings and levels.

If you are using TGEA, then it's no problem just check the "use polysoup" checkbox in the in-game editor for the DTS object.

#4 Gamespace has two .map exporters, but you have to create your geometry correctly (just like most .map exporters that use extrusion methods to create valid CSG from planar polies.

#5 GS/tS, for all their strengths in modelling DTS objects, are somewhat weak when modelling for .map/.dif formats. As David says, it can be done (I wrote a plugin and tutorials for that purpose, though it's no longer available), but the biggest word of caution I can give on this is to never edit at the vertex level. It's too easy to "break" the model that way, and you can easily end up with export errors or artifacts in your interior models.

My own opinion on the matter is to use Constructor (or other BSP tools, if you're familiar with them).

#6 Aside from aesthetics... the important elements for building a dense city is LOD, batching, and zoning.

From what i remember DIF although it has LOD, does a poor job of batching draw calls together. I would be worried about too much CPU overhead drawing small sections of the buildings. DIF does have zoning which is great for keeping the interior areas of a building from being rendered when not being seen.

DTS can perform wonderfully putting nearly full control over the number of draw calls in the hands of the artist. It has good LOD and support auto-billboards for really distant buildings. DTS however doesn't support zoning, so interiors areas and other SceneObjects inside a building would be fully rendered. This is something we're running into here as well... not sure what the right solution is for zoning with DTS.

Both DTS and DIF have good collision (polysoup on DTS is pretty fast). So collision shouldn't be an issue.

Shadowing is a problem for both DIF and DTS. DIF lightmaps are fixed at one time of day while DTS has no standard shadowing solution. In this case it would be smart to implement something like parallel split shadow maps.

If your looking to do something quick and don't need a very far view distance Alan's example is what you should do.

If you have some programming talent you can make a custom DTS solution work much better.

#7 @David & Ted, cool to know. Never really got into the Truespace/Gamespace interface, but nice to know it has/had .MAP exporters.

@Tom, could you use a DIF inside a DTS for zoning. What I mean is maybe a really simple "Building within a building"? For example with the dexsoft-games tavern on the DEV shot, put simple DIF model that roughly matched the layout for both collision (if not using polysoup) and then portalize it and zone it? Or would the effect be lost with the DIF "inside" the DTS object? I've never tried it so I was just curious.

#8 @Alan - Well... your the DIF expert. Could you create a DIF that has no geometry on the outside but has geometry on the inside? Like just the portal and zone interior parts and nothing on the outside of it?

If you can do that you can match up a DIF interior with the exterior of a DTS. The DIF part would only really render the visible doorway portal and nothing else on the inside unless you walk in. The DTS would render all the exterior stuff.

#9 @Tom, LOL! I just know how to build them...I don't know how they work... =)

Yeah, I think I might be able to do something like that...I was actually thinking of placing the DIF inside of the DTS object itself...hmmm...I think I'll have some experimenting to do late tonight...

#10 I have built whole citys using the,.dff and my level runs great.
i have 4,000 ram
512 video ram
3.19 prosessor

#11 Can you post a screenshot james?

#12 Http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=364072627&albumID=0&imageID=9109273

#13 That road looks great.

#14 Awsome Road. Can you send me the road? My email is bishop.alexander@gmail.com

#15 Im going to get the file ready to send you today.

#16 Thanks james. Awosme road. Your an awsome 3d modeller :)

#17 Thank you