Level design, interiors, and Stairs
by Bill Hayes (Hayes New Media) · in Torque 3D Professional · 05/10/2010 (11:40 am) · 9 replies
I'm putting together a little city scene, and i'm a little unsure about how to do it...Up until know I would have made my buildings that had interiors in Constructor as Difs, and non-enter-able buildings in Max as DTS files. With Collada i no longer need to do this, right? If I can just make my whole scene in max and export it straight to Torque can I do it as one collada file, i.e my buildings, both enter-able and non enter-able, and roads/ground, and then just load my static shapes in separately, or should i export each building and road out as their own file and piece it together in the world editor (which would be rather tedious i feel). Do i have to portalize my collada interiors? Another problem i've encountered is making stairs, or curbs, or anything that the player has to step up onto, he doesn't want to do it, i have to jump onto it, even if its only a few inches tall (from my characters perspective) any help would be greatly appreciated!
About the author
I'm pretty much a jack of all trades, with an extreme passion for learning all things relating to 3D game design, especially art pipelines and asset creation...
#2
05/10/2010 (1:08 pm)
I'm glad it was you that replied to this eb, I just bought DoIt! and I just want to say thank you for this amazing tool. I can't get my model to animate, but that's a different topic..maybe you could give me a hand with that later as well : P As far as this post, I get the gist of it, ill make my whole scene in max, with each building on their own layers, and the whole road/terrain on it's own, and export them seperately. I also found a maxStepHeight in my player script, maybe that has something to do with the stair problem...does my bounds object get defaulted to be my collision mesh unless i say otherwise? Sorry if i'm asking a million questions, I just really want to get over these initial hurdles so i can focus on my level design... 
#3
-I can answer questions when you're stuck but I would think you could test and analyze faster than I could teach with precision to your thought patterns. Nevertheless;
- the bounds is for game scene calculation; if the bounds is visible then mesh renders.
- The bounds is also for level design selection in some cases/engines.
- the bounds does not default to the col(collision) volume.
Good luck... I am here if you need to ask more Q's.
P.S. this is my 1000 post in these forums. Should I not get a reward of helpfulness ? ..and one of 'rantitude' ? (@Mperry: :P)
05/11/2010 (12:34 am)
Sadly, only time & experience will get you where you need to go! -I can answer questions when you're stuck but I would think you could test and analyze faster than I could teach with precision to your thought patterns. Nevertheless;
- the bounds is for game scene calculation; if the bounds is visible then mesh renders.
- The bounds is also for level design selection in some cases/engines.
- the bounds does not default to the col(collision) volume.
Good luck... I am here if you need to ask more Q's.
P.S. this is my 1000 post in these forums. Should I not get a reward of helpfulness ? ..and one of 'rantitude' ? (@Mperry: :P)
#4
There's a little bit of accidental culling with all of this at the moment, culls a bit too much at certain angles, but it's been reported on the bug forums so watch-n-wait I guess.
As for MaxStepHeight (stock 1.5 which is like wardrobe sized steps - I use 0.5, but that depends on the scale you're using), it probably has some combination to do with RunForce. Also all objects in-game have a AllowPlayerStep - if set to "0", then the player can't step up on it.
Remember, player collision is based on the player's bounding box, and if you have an overhead mesh (like a doorframe) the player might be hitting his bounding-box on the upper mantle/whateveritscalled. Solution, external step outside the door to boost the player to the correct height for walking in.
This is my 2305th comedic spam attack ... er I mean, helpful post. ;)
05/11/2010 (7:00 am)
2. eb is thinking of "Zones". Zones hide anything inside them from rendering (except maybe shadows and decals), and Portals attatched to a Zone are like windows that can see through them, or doorways that join Zones together (the Portal will go green when it touches 2 Zones - handy for when you're jiggling it around try to align it in the editor).There's a little bit of accidental culling with all of this at the moment, culls a bit too much at certain angles, but it's been reported on the bug forums so watch-n-wait I guess.
As for MaxStepHeight (stock 1.5 which is like wardrobe sized steps - I use 0.5, but that depends on the scale you're using), it probably has some combination to do with RunForce. Also all objects in-game have a AllowPlayerStep - if set to "0", then the player can't step up on it.
Remember, player collision is based on the player's bounding box, and if you have an overhead mesh (like a doorframe) the player might be hitting his bounding-box on the upper mantle/whateveritscalled. Solution, external step outside the door to boost the player to the correct height for walking in.
This is my 2305th comedic spam attack ... er I mean, helpful post. ;)
#5
05/11/2010 (4:46 pm)
Steve, you definitely deserve a comedic spam attack award IMO. :P 
#6
@eb - You should notified me on the 1K post in IRC or something. Congrats and thanks for being such a valuable contributor to the community. I'll give you a shout-out in our next big blog.
07/31/2010 (3:58 pm)
My apologies for necro-ing this thread. I'm documenting the zone and portal classes right now for our manual, so there was some useful information in this thread I appreciate.@eb - You should notified me on the 1K post in IRC or something. Congrats and thanks for being such a valuable contributor to the community. I'll give you a shout-out in our next big blog.
#7
07/31/2010 (11:46 pm)
..no need Mperry, there are others that help more than I do. I was just goofin' around. // Thx for the thought tho. 
#8
And this is not flattery; as to what motivation could I have for manipulation by ingratiation. Im just confirming the fact of your being a valuable contributor to the community.
08/01/2010 (12:33 am)
Ah, dont be so modest eb! You have great insight into the art content creation process of Torque, and it is obvious much experience. You often have brilliant solutions for complex questions. And this is not flattery; as to what motivation could I have for manipulation by ingratiation. Im just confirming the fact of your being a valuable contributor to the community.
Torque Owner TheGasMan
G.A.S. [+others]
- If you want to be an pro artist for any of the newer engine tech out in this world..you'll need a thick skin for anything "tedious".
2. T3D has portal entities..and one other entity to help with this iirc. Just can't remember the name right now.
3. with new'ish engine tech(for years now); you would make a collision mesh for your model and simply place a 100% transparent texture onto it..and force it the mesh/object/model to use polysoup collision which is also known as mesh-collision. Use ramps to collision stairs and small ramps for curbs....etc.
make sense ?