Torque and huge buildings
by Nate "Nateholio" Watson · in General Discussion · 01/23/2003 (3:16 am) · 7 replies
Does anyone know if Torque can handle huge buildings with complex floor plans? The reason I ask is that I have a few pyramid designs that are on the order of a 500 meters tall and 1000 meters on a side and am wondering if I should even bother with them. Functionally each is made up of 4 identical wedges but they still make up a single structure. Will I need to split them into 4 seperate areas for indoor play or can I just run them as one area? Also can Torque handle a structure that big from an outdoor perspective? I just also remembered this- can Torque support HUGE (5km x 1km) spacecraft? I have space station designs that are larger, but I'm not sure if any engine can support things the size of these.
#2
01/23/2003 (7:59 am)
If you can build within the size limits of Quark, and use LOD (!!), you should be able to run it as 1 building. Yesterday I exported a building with 856 polys in LOD1, 360 in LOD2, 251 in LOD 3 and only 138 in the lowest LOD. While playing you don't see it changing lod (well... if you know what changes, you see it offourse, but if you don't know you don't even notice). So, lets say your piramid is 5000 polygons, you can bring it down to 200 using good LOD settings.
#3
As long as you have portals and stuff set up properly, you should be ok... And some of the hardcoded limits can be fudged up an order of magnitude or two, if you have/are a good coder.
01/23/2003 (11:41 am)
Does it really need to be that big? :)As long as you have portals and stuff set up properly, you should be ok... And some of the hardcoded limits can be fudged up an order of magnitude or two, if you have/are a good coder.
#4
01/23/2003 (11:50 am)
Hmmm, I might have to break the structure up and assemble it in-game - another building I was working on earlier 3/5ths the size and still ran off the grid. As for does it need to be so big....I dont think a military command center for a civilization of a few trillion people would be anything small, especially since it has a complete garrison of troops and equipment stationed in it for its protection. :D 
#5
there was no noticeable drops in fps.
www.planetquake.com/noescape/dev1/ss1.jpg
heres a top veiw of the whole thing
www.planetquake.com/noescape/dev1/ss2.jpg
course that is all that is in the map except for the lava bed below it in case you fall off, you die. :)
01/24/2003 (6:55 am)
i made a big space station afew mounths ago (my third map) ididnt use any lod (cuz i dint know abuot it)there was no noticeable drops in fps.
www.planetquake.com/noescape/dev1/ss1.jpg
heres a top veiw of the whole thing
www.planetquake.com/noescape/dev1/ss2.jpg
course that is all that is in the map except for the lava bed below it in case you fall off, you die. :)
#6
01/24/2003 (10:56 am)
Nice work, did you make it in Hammer or 3DS Max?
#7
I used quark4torque before they intergrated the torque stuff to just quark, i couldnt get wc to work, but quark fired right up, so needless to say it got elected to do the job. Now that i think of it it was closer to a year that i made that.
There are only 3 difs for the whole map (three kinds of difs) 4 halls, 2 halls, and 1 hall so you can make that station as big or as small as you want it.
01/24/2003 (4:21 pm)
Thanks :)I used quark4torque before they intergrated the torque stuff to just quark, i couldnt get wc to work, but quark fired right up, so needless to say it got elected to do the job. Now that i think of it it was closer to a year that i made that.
There are only 3 difs for the whole map (three kinds of difs) 4 halls, 2 halls, and 1 hall so you can make that station as big or as small as you want it.
Torque Owner Matthew Jones
Matt