No Zaei, 4 tiles would be ghastly. It should be more along the line of 400 or so. (20 x 20). Maybe more! Are tiles squares with 4 elevation points? If so, that's what I want.
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No Zaei, 4 tiles would be ghastly. It should be more along the line of 400 or so. (20 x 20). Maybe more! Are tiles squares with 4 elevation points? If so, that's what I want.
Thats exactly what they are, though I will be adding in fractal details, to make the spots between main elevation points more interesting, which allows the actual loaded heightmap to be scaled arbitrarily.
Here is a shot of a 10x10 map. The frame rate only goes down from here, but it should be acceptable =). Thats 10x10 tiles at 12 triangles per tile.
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=965863
Z.
PS: i had to do a bit of clipping to get the image to less then 100K, but you get the idea =).
In other words 1200 triangles, which is more than 20 quads on screen. That's about 24.5 quads!
What I mean is 20x20 grid and 24.5x24.5 grid.
By the way, can we have detail textures inbetween the tiles, instead of blending?
Explain =).Quote:
Originally posted by Sastraxi
What I mean is 20x20 grid and 24.5x24.5 grid.
By the way, can we have detail textures inbetween the tiles, instead of blending?
Z.
Well, i fink i almost got it working :D
Zaei - Dont blow the text up, leave it one time, i think it looks skank at that.
Can u make a demo for us that allows us to change the number of tiles and let us run it on our machines so we can see what is acceptable on better machines ??
hey, not meaning to be a complete arse....
But...
... wud'nt it be easier to create a terrain engine that works from heightmaps, then make it so u can put buildings on it and work from there.
Or have i completely lost the plot here ?
i know a tile engine would perhaps be easier and perhaps more suited, but a tile engine which then uses a heightmap to move the heights, isnt that a bit odd ?
-Sorry if that seems completely out of sink and reasoning with what you have done, which i like btw. i was just wondering why not.
I have to blow the text up, or it wouldnt be readable because of the jpg compression =).
The reason I chose to do a tile map with heights is because of the texturing. The standard method of texturing a height map is with a single large texture stretched over the terrain. On today's hardware, however, the maximum texture size is 1024x1024, which looks really bad stretched over a huge terrain set. To combat this, the usual method is to use a detail texture, which simply tiles a texture MANY times over the already colored terrain, adding in detail. The problem here, though, is that my card doesnt support multitexturing, so the only way to do this is to render the terrain twice. Ew. So, my idea is that, since a heightmap is set up as a grid anyway, why not use a standard tile map? With alpha blending, I can save memory because I dont need transition textures from, for instance, sand to water, so I can have any type of tile bordering any other type, giving more freedom. Also, I get higher quality terrain, because the textures on the tiles are not stretched, and I can vary the type of terrain, whereas using a detail texture only allows that one texture of ground cover, with a color. Its also pretty darn easy to implement =).
Z.
What I mean is, as you can see the grass is a perfect tiling texture. However, the way you've blended it, you can see the individual tiles on screen.
What I'm saying is I would get 60 fps with this if I could see 24.5 tiles both horizontally and vertically. Since my computer is quite, quite old anyway, I'm sure it would do!
ok, kewl.
Yeah, I know that I need to fix the grass blending =).
Z.
Hows this?
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=967551
Z.
a hell of a lot better.
can ya find a smoother texture for the grass coz that looks really pixelly ?
We will eventually get one of our artists to make us one =).
Z.
Here is ~20x20, 8 triangles per tile.
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=967767
Z.
Why are there not 2 triangles per tile?
Because of the overlap. The tiles have to be aligned to each other exactly, or the textures get corrupted. In this case, each tiles consists of 4 chunks of 2 triangles each.
Z.
Huh? Other games can do this without any overlap. Why is it needed in this case?
It saves memory because we dont need transition tiles, and speed, because we dont have to use CPU cycles to decide on what texture to place on what tile (transition tiles). Also, HDD space, because we dont need transition tiles. If, for every 2 types of tiles, you need 8 transistion tiles, that is a lot of wasted space =). The terrain also doesnt need hardware multi-texturing capabilities, and we get more terrain detail.
Also, it would be more expensive, rendering-wise to call DrawIndexedPrimitive() for 2 triangles, as opposed to 8.
I decided that this would work, because, for an RTS, accurate terrain representation is pretty important, especially when you take Line Of Sight and such into account.
Z.
Oh, and I have determined that the terrain is fill-rate limited. I will see what (if anything) I can do about that.
Z.
Hey, here is something cool. I just shrunk all of the textures down to 32x32, and the frame rate jumped from 2 to 8-9 =).
The actual rendering looks a bit washed out, but that is fixable with better quality tiles(i simply shrunk the ones I had), and with 64x64 textures, the quality is no less then the full 256x256 textures, with a frame rate of 6-8 fps.
Z.
Ok, I get what you're talking about. So, this is good progress!! :)
Good work Zaei and Psy for your recent network endeavours!
Yea i got it wokring slightly better, UDP is not wokring though. for some reason when i cast back the client class it does not keep the socket numbers or the usernames etc.
I dunno why coz i ent changed it since i last had it working.
I will probably re-write the whole ****ing lot again :( i can re-use most of it but the server and client classes have to be re-done.
The problem is partially to do with Blockin/Non-Blocking sockets. If the socket is blocking though the standard winsock connect function fails it still returns true even though its not connected. I think i will have to change some of DivSock to get this to work. I may also just use TCP for the moment coz UDP will be easy to add. or i may use reliable packets instead of UDP and then switch it once its done and working.
I should have a TNT2 as of tomorrow with which to program our game =). I will probably also be keeping the Rage Pro, for legacy testing =).
Z.
kewl =)
Well, I have been a little out of it the last two days, from Nyquil and Benadryl, so I havent gotten anything done, unfortunately. I should be feeling better soon, and Ill get back to work then.
Z.
Get Well Soon!!
We got a three day weekend so im out on the old pot/beer/sk8 weekend so i dont think im gonna get much work done. The new version is going well tho i havent tested as i need to spend a while getting it setup with a dummy aplication.
My new card is installed, and has doubled my frame rates =).
Z.
I started in in adding some height variation to the terrain, and all is looking good!
Z.
Well, I just took a look at the War3 video card tester, and I simply love the modelling that Blizzard has done with thier models.
Anyway, it has gotten me to want to get the model conversions and stuff finished up, so I have a request. I would like someone to create a static mesh for me, WITH TEXTURING, exported to ASE format, from 3D Studio, and a model with both texturing AND bone animation, in .3ds format. I want to add texture coordinates to the current ASE converter, and write the skinned mesh converter (.3ds -> .x -> TOW format), and engine code.
Z.
hey, i would do that model for you but im crap at modelling and knowing how to do that kind of thing.
Glad to hear ur card is borking good.
I would do it but I don't have the modelling software.
all is going well here.
tonight i have got it so the client will connect and specify a port for the server to callback with the udp connection on. i have also got data passing 100% correctly. im currently writing up the protocol, should be workin very good very soon, i have also got more than enough error handling in place.
We are going to need another modeller if Igor is going to be unreachable most of the time...
Z.
Igor is around on MSN more noe he has got the net working again. i left him a message to come to this thread and post a response.
Ah, OK. I only see people on this thread, so I didnt know he had his net working again =). That is certainly a good thing!
Z.
I found a random textured model on the web somewhere, and converted it to ASE. It turns out that getting the texture coordinates will be easy =). I am also going to be expanding the model conversion code to allow for more then one texture.
All I need now is how bones work =).
Z.
Hey.
I know I have'nt been...'here' in a while. I have a lot to do in school and my Net has'nt been working properly for awhile. anyways, my net is up, and I can do something again.... some things.. Ask me to do something, and I'll do my best :P
Welcome back =).
At the moment, I am in need of a simple skinned animation(it needs to move =), in .3ds format =).
Z.
Ok, here is some nice smooth height mapped terrain =). How is the camera positioning, etc?
http://www.vbforums.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=975646
Z.