Game Development Community

Elevators, Lifts, Platforms

by John Doppler Schiff · in Torque Game Engine · 03/04/2007 (12:29 am) · 4 replies

Hi guys,
Well, this topic has been tossed around since at least 2001, but I still haven't seen a solution that works for me. Has anyone developed a decent elevator mechanism?

I couldn't get Ramen's riding platforms to work with my bastardized engine; it crashes spectacularly, and I haven't tracked down the cause yet.

Animated DTS objects caused the player to drop through the mesh as soon as the DTS moved.

Physical Zones with a vertical boost didn't offer enough control over the player's movement.

Changing the player's transform when they enter a trigger area resulted in very choppy movement.

Stairs and ramps suck.

I'm running out of possible solutions, and I'm not sure which (if any) of these approaches are going to be worth pursuing. How are you master gamesmiths out there handling this?

#1
03/04/2007 (2:45 am)
I was hoping there would be an answer to this myself. I don't quite yet need it, but I will soon.

Do you know if anyone has tried to build an elevator as a vehicle? I know you already said that an animated dts object wouldn't work, but I can't figure out why one could mount a vehicle and ride it, and not an elevator. Have you tried a dts shape with mount nodes? I couldn't for the life of me see why it wouldn't work, but I could be very wrong.

This isn't the easiest solution, your characters would need mount points as well. You'd also have to limit the vehicle to vertical movements. I don't think it would be impossible to do though.

(edited for a booboo)
#2
03/04/2007 (6:37 am)
Have you looked at the ode resource? I believe ode has a class for elevators. (I know newton does)
You may want to try that as TGE's physics engine is quite basic.
#3
03/04/2007 (7:26 am)
@John- Incase you wan't to check out Mikes suggestion....which is a really good one....I found this resource for ya to check out....garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=11767 It's a resource that adds ode support to torque.
#4
03/04/2007 (11:17 am)
Oooooh, I hadn't considered ODE! That might be the ticket, as we're considering some mini-games that could use more robust physics than the RigidShapeClass provides...

Looks like it's time for some research into ODE.

As for the vehicles, that was something I had considered, but I'd rather not glue the players to the platform with a mount point.

Thanks for the input, guys! I'll let you guys know what happens. =)