Interiors

#1 I guess it depends on what you don't like about them. If it's the layout, architecture and textures, probably not the engine :)

There are a few things that may be making a difference. We don't have radiosity lighting (project for someone?), there are no "volumetric" lights and no interior volumetric fog. There is volumetric fog for the whole mission, including the terrain, but not fog specific to an interior.

#2 I think design is a large factor too. Although I feel the interiors in Tribes2 are perfect for the theme of the game (they look like what they are, fortifications built by intersteller frontiersmen, places for generating power and resupplying). It all comes down to a matter of texturing and prop placement druing building creation plus what props the level designer adds to the insides of the buildings after they've been imported into the mission editor.

#3 I personnaly find the t2 interior stunning. I like the green light lines with the "halo" look. Pretty neet if you ask me.

#4 The buildings in T2 are fairly low on the polygon count. The question is, is it a severe performance issue with the engine, did Dynamix just keep the poly count low, or did they just not decent to apply resources to making uber-fancy interiors? I'm guessing they kept the poly count fairly low because LOD is tougher to control. For terrain, controling LOD is easier. You can always increase poly count by adding interpolated (bezier or whatever) vertices, or decrease it by lower the resolution of your height map and restretching it. Interiors can only do this for curved surfaces. Hard details like finely granulated stairs vs. ramps require additional content work on the part of the level designer. Q3 did a lot of stuff like broken tile floors and window sill type edging that T2 doesn't, and are tough to control in the way of LOD.

I'm not sure if V12 will have tools to do good interior LOD. Obviously with the source this could be added if it's not ready to roll on release.

Perhaps V12 can handle Q3 like interiors with no problems.

Light halos are pretty basic. This should be simple to do with Worldcraft. Just add a point sprite with a texture, give it an additive or overlay blend mode, and opacity value, or use an alpha texture.

Volumetric fog is a feature of OpenGL (and I assume DirectX), so with the source code this should be possbile to add, ala Serious Sam. It would be possible to write code into the map compiler to interpret solid boxes with a special "fog" texture as a volume for fog, similar to placing "hint" and "clip" brushes.

#5 Having multiple buildings out in a mission is definitely a constraint on exterior building complexity. The V12 does support static LOD for buildings, but you have to be careful not to get too much "pop" between detail levels. Buildings are also pretty large, so if your near one building, nearby buildings are usually at high detail as well. The interiors could have been more complex that they were, frame rates for T2 inside of buildings are way higher than out on the terrain.

#6 Hi
My name BlackShadow. I am the lead mapper for a game called Arms of Enchantment. I have been using WC for a while in now. From Half Life to now V12(Tribes 2). We plan on using the v12 engine to make our game. So recently I started making some interiors. I got a error on one of them. It says

Fatal: (mPoint.h @ 1528)
div by zero attempted"

What does this mean and how can I fix it.
If you have any idea , any help would be appreciated.

,BlackShadow

#7 Muwahahaha! Welcome to the fun I've been having with map2dif for the last couple of months =)

Seriously though, that error usually comes from when you do a carve or two and a ray or line is left over. The best way to track these down is to select all of the geometry you just carved manually in the 3d view and then to move it to the side. You should then see the leftover rays if you look closely. Delete them and your map will compile fine.

Another thing to watch out for is geometry with zero thickness or width.

#8 Hey thanks Mathew for all your help. Are you making interiors for Tribes 2 or V12 for any certain reason or just for the fun.

,BlackShadow

#9 Wait,
Sorry dummy me you not a Memeber your an Associate. That explains why you were so much help thanks.

,BlackShadow

#10 I got another question, about another error. : ) Usuelly to fix theys I start over from my last saving spot. But this time I accidently saved and exited, before I compiled.

Whats this mean:

Fatal-ISV: (bspNode.cc @ 681)

Vislink cannot be coplanar with node!

,thanks

#11 Hehe....yeah, I dabbled in the black art of structure design (I refuse to call them interiors b/c I am not an interior designer =) so that ya'll would have a little more to look at than Tim's boxes and pyramids =)

As for the "Vislink cannot be coplanar with node!" error...let me see if I can remmebr what causes that...

First, I would check for those 0 thickness/width brushes I mentioned before....these are harder to find because they are a lot easier to select than a ray. What comes in handy here is Undo =) Start selecting the brushes you suspect and delete them, save to a .map, and try building the structure (but don't close Worldcraft!!!). If you are still getting the error, then hit Undo and pick some new brushes. Do this till you have pinpointed the trouble brushe(s).

Also, I think I got that error fairly often when I tried using the Vertex Tool. For some reason when I exported some of the Vertex Tool editing geometry out to a map file it would merge vertices and just mess up the geometry in general. The thing you have to watch out for is creating faces that aren't perfect planes. Opening up the .map file directly can quickly help you track down these problems.

#12 Hey thanks for your help Matt. I will see what happens.

Your new friend,
Ryan : )

#13 Hey its me again sorry.

I have a some more errors to ask you about. They all involve something called DMoore. What is this?

,Ryan

#14 Dave Moore was the author of morian, or map2dif as it's now called, and was not a strong believer in informative error messages.

#15 My personal favorite map2dif error is the one that says to go smack DMoore =)

Most of the DMoore errors I got were in relation to portals and lighting. Bascically it boils down to the fact that you really don't want to lay a portal across anything much more complicated than a ractangular hole. Also, non-rectangular portals are a bad idea.

Someone asked in an older thread why the structures in Tribes 2 were simplistic compared to those in HL, UT, and Quake3...I believe the answer is that the engine can support complex geometry but the map2dif tool can't =) I'm convinced the reason so many buildings in T2 have those shafts with the curved tops and bottoms is b/c someone lucked out on getting it to compile one day and they starting cutting and pasting it into everything =)

Serously though, making the map2dif tool more user-friendly is pretty high up on my priority list. I just gotta find time for it =)

#16 Hey its me again. Its been a while. My friend got the v12 engine. He compiled it for me. So of course I went to set up WC for it. I set it up the same way I did Tribes 2, but changed everything correctly for v12. Heres what it says.



** Executing...
** Command: Change Directory
** Parameters: c:\aoe\game


** Executing...
** Command: C:\AOE\Game\map2dif.exe
** Parameters: "c:\aoe\worldcraft\cool.map" data/interiors

* Could not execute the command:
"C:\AOE\Game\map2dif.exe" "c:\aoe\worldcraft\cool.map" data/interiors
* Windows gave the error message:
"The operation completed successfully."

Any help would be appreciated.

,Ryan Osborn

#17 bump

#18 We're running into a problem with Interiors having light bleeding through the walls at connecting points... anyone know of a way to resolve this? Like, the sunlight is shining in at the corners of the buildings (and they are flush to each other, there's no gap)

Thanks
-bw

#19 Re:

Quote: Volumetric fog is a feature of OpenGL (and I assume DirectX), so with the source code this should be possbile to add, ala Serious Sam. It would be possible to write code into the map compiler to interpret solid boxes with a special "fog" texture as a volume for fog, similar to placing "hint" and "clip" brushes.

This is not quite true. Per Vertex calculated Z distance fog is part of OpenGL, adn this does a reasonable job of global fogging. With extensions you can make this fog eye distance based, which is much better, and some cards support other more complex forms.

Volumetric fog, however, is done in a different way, usually not even using the conventional fog interface. This usually requires that the geometry is cut up so that edges which intersect a fog volume are broken up with a vertex at that point. Other methods include using a low res billboarded fog texture with each texel calculated on the fly dependent on distance through fog.

Of course, all this stuff can be implemented for those who require it.

Good luck,

Doug EnkiSoftware Limited

#20 "We're running into a problem with Interiors having light bleeding through the walls at connecting points... anyone know of a way to resolve this? Like, the sunlight is shining in at the corners of the buildings (and they are flush to each other, there's no gap)"


make absolutly sure that there are no brush surfaces that run through you object that come it contact with outside ambient light and that your portals are set up correctly and or you have created a 100% foolproof light trap. I prefure both and if you lok at the larger interiors created by the t2 dev team. they apear to use both litetraps as well as portal brushes (coincidence? NOT!) dont think so at least. If al else fails and you cant find your leek block off sections with a oversized brush, half your object or so then compile see if you have your leek still, move recompile till you figure out were you problem area is.