Previous thread summary
by David Dougher · in Torque Game Engine · 06/13/2003 (7:37 am) · 4 replies
A brief summary the previous terrain thread posts is here. Feel free to add in by including replies.
The initial basics.
Ok. Here's a capsule summary of the Terrain Manager Project
The original Terrain Manager was written by Bryan Turner. It is an NxM manager, meaning that you specify how many rows and columns of tiles you will have in your mission area followed by the terrain tiles to be loaded. It requires a modification to the mission file to add a new block of info that indicates how many terrain tiles you will have in your mission. Below is an example of the modification...
new TerrainManager(TerrainMgr) {
position = "-1024 -1024 0";
rotation = "1 0 0 0";
scale = "1 1 1";
squareSize = "8";
numBlocksWide = "1"; //< Change this to add additional tiles left to right
numBlocksHigh = "1"; //< Change this to add additional tiles up and down
detailTexture = "~/data/terrains/details/detail1";
};
new SimGroup(Terrain) {
new TerrainBlock() {
rotation = "1 0 0 0";
scale = "1 1 1";
detailTexture = "~/data/terrains/details/detail1";
terrainFile = "./waterWorld.ter";
emptySquares = "99744 443522 443778 444034";
lockfile = "false";
preserveFile = "false";
locked = "true";
};
// Additional terrain blocks go here...
};
Maintenance of the Terrain Manager was given over to J. Donavan Stanley who maintains a copy on his site, the Gorpe Project.
It is updated on an irregular basis as new ideas are added and fixes are implemented.
You can get a copy at www.gorpe.com in the downloads section.
The Terrain Manager is using the patch system and depending on what version of the software you are using you may have to apply some of the patches manually.
While the software is remarkably stable it is not completely free of bugs and is not 100% feature complete in comparison to the single terrain tile system. You should plan on spending a bit of time studying the terrain system before implementing the Terrain manager and be prepared to have more than one thing go wrong while you are using it.
With that said, it is one cool piece of work.
The initial basics.
Ok. Here's a capsule summary of the Terrain Manager Project
The original Terrain Manager was written by Bryan Turner. It is an NxM manager, meaning that you specify how many rows and columns of tiles you will have in your mission area followed by the terrain tiles to be loaded. It requires a modification to the mission file to add a new block of info that indicates how many terrain tiles you will have in your mission. Below is an example of the modification...
new TerrainManager(TerrainMgr) {
position = "-1024 -1024 0";
rotation = "1 0 0 0";
scale = "1 1 1";
squareSize = "8";
numBlocksWide = "1"; //< Change this to add additional tiles left to right
numBlocksHigh = "1"; //< Change this to add additional tiles up and down
detailTexture = "~/data/terrains/details/detail1";
};
new SimGroup(Terrain) {
new TerrainBlock() {
rotation = "1 0 0 0";
scale = "1 1 1";
detailTexture = "~/data/terrains/details/detail1";
terrainFile = "./waterWorld.ter";
emptySquares = "99744 443522 443778 444034";
lockfile = "false";
preserveFile = "false";
locked = "true";
};
// Additional terrain blocks go here...
};
Maintenance of the Terrain Manager was given over to J. Donavan Stanley who maintains a copy on his site, the Gorpe Project.
It is updated on an irregular basis as new ideas are added and fixes are implemented.
You can get a copy at www.gorpe.com in the downloads section.
The Terrain Manager is using the patch system and depending on what version of the software you are using you may have to apply some of the patches manually.
While the software is remarkably stable it is not completely free of bugs and is not 100% feature complete in comparison to the single terrain tile system. You should plan on spending a bit of time studying the terrain system before implementing the Terrain manager and be prepared to have more than one thing go wrong while you are using it.
With that said, it is one cool piece of work.
About the author
Owner - Pariah Games, Adjunct Professor - Bristol Community College, Mentor - Game Design - Met School Newport, Mentor - Game Design - Met School Providence
#2
06/14/2003 (11:14 am)
I also should be mentioned that 0,0 is the bottom left corner for just about everything in Torque / OpenGL. I banged my head against that rather harshly the first time I started mucking around.
#3
06/14/2003 (12:43 pm)
I have lost track of this project, has dynamic terrain loading and terrain pageing been added?
#4
06/14/2003 (12:44 pm)
@Ron - Dave and Fredrik are working on just that thing. 
Torque Owner David Dougher
Pariah Games
Loading tiles...
While the Terrain Manager loads tiles from Left to Right it also currently loads from bottom to top, not from top to bottom as one might intuitively feel is correct. So here's how it looks if you have a 3x3 terrain layout and you load in the terrains starting from T_0_0 to T_3_3 with your character loading in the first tile in the lower left corner.
The visual order of the terrains will be...
T_3_0 T_3_1 T_3_2
T_2_0 T_2_1 T_2_2
T_0_0 T_0_1 T_0_2
!
You would start down here.