Repeating Terrain

#1 It is possible but only if you have a fairly thorough understanding of how the terrain code works. There are some constants that must be tweaked. Something on the list to document, but not very high (many more pressing issues!). Check terrData.h around line 132. Good luck! :)

#2 I know in the map editor when you double the block size it effectively doubles the distance until the terrain repeats itself, wouldn't it be possible
to just double (or quadruple ;) the number of blocks, leaving them the same size?

(I am sure it would reduce framerate but just assume for a moment that I don't care =)

I'm not good at all with C++, or math, for that matter, so if this is a stupid question, please flame me.

#3 It's not a stupid question, but doing it that way implies basically re-writing the TGE terrain code from scratch--it is designed completely around a heightmap that is a 256x256 grid of height values. Instead, if it is an issue for you, then TSE is most probably an excellent solution! (unlimited terrain size).

#4 I looked into increasing the terrain size for a few hours one day... by changing the block size you can get some huge play areas going... h-u-g-e... The problem is that other parts of the engine are dependent on the default blocksize and that it quickly becomes evident how much work would be involved to fix up the problems.

In our case, we simply scaled the player down (the Orc in the demo is HUGE), which bought us nearly 2x the playable area... and for Minions of Mirth this is PLENTY of area for a single zone.

-Josh

#5 I personally find it somewhat important to point out that the detail to player size ratio is somewhat important, seeing as halving the size of your character is essentially the same as cutting your land detail by half as well. It would be pretty nice if some higher resolution height maps could be supported, but its been said that this would require a massive rewrite of the terrain engine AND is obsolete as of TSE terrain anyway.

#6 It doesn't require a massive rewrite. In fact it's fairly simple once you know where all the different hooks are that need to be 'fixed'.

I have plans of documenting how to get bigger then 256x heightmaps working in Torque but I have a lot of stuff on my plate at the moment.

#7 I don't understand the discussion above about rewriting the terrain code. Changing the terrain size before repeating (as was asked in the first post) is simply changing the terrain squareSize variable in the editor. The default is 8 and can be changed up or down in powers of two so you get either doubling or halving in size.

#8 This is somewhat of an issue as I need large terrain, however TSE (this is only based on my experience with the demo) seems to have much higher system requirements than TGE. Regardless I'm sure I will purchase TSE.

Can we get some clarification on 'unlimited terrain size' in TSE? I haven't yet heard anything from an employee other than the post of the screenshot of Mt. St. Helens. Nice work on that, btw =)

With a scale of 1 to 5, what kind of terrain size can we expect from Stock TSE? (Assuming a blocksize and scale identical to stock TGE)

1. a city like San Francisco
2. A state like Colorado
3. the entire united states
4. Mars
5. A ringworld

I'm actually trying to build an entire planet so large terrain would be nice.

#9 You would need at least a 64bit processor to do a seamless (meaning not broken into "loading please wait!" areas) terrain the size of the USA.

#10

Quote:You would need at least a 64bit processor to do a seamless (meaning not broken into "loading please wait!" areas) terrain the size of the USA.

...the two have nothing to do with each other.

TSE does not do terrain on the same model as TGE, and pages terrain information in and out of memory (in fact, off and on the GPU if I understand Ben's description of the tech in his various plans).

The size of the terrain in TSE is limited by your hard drive space, not your cpu type.

#11 I see, thank you Stephen that is helpful information.

Is the terrain still manipulated from within the editor in the same way?

#12 I have absolutely no idea on how the editor is set up myself--milestone 2 (which is the new terrain model) hasn't been released yet.

#13 Robert, a how-to for allowing larger terrain maps would be very welcome.

#14 Ya, I've been somewhat busy. Sorry. No promises when I get it done but I'll be sure to post in this thread when I do.

#15 Cant wait :-)

#16 Great! Big terrain is what I've been waiting for for a while!

Looks like I'm buying TSE!