Movement grid projected dynamic or static - ideas?
by Sam Contapay · in Torque Game Engine · 07/13/2008 (8:12 am) · 3 replies
Its been awhile since I even though of using this engine, or been interested in game dev. But since life settled down for me and I got a job, programming front end GUI w/database backend (boring, but pays the bills), I decided to reignite my hobby for my internal RPG group.
Sorry for the explanation, good to be back, seen so many changes since 2002, and hope the community is just as helpful. Here are my ideals, forgive me if they're stupid for accomplishing what I want to accomplish. I hope you will correct me or point me in the right direction to solve this. I find the current search on the website lacking (tried for an hour on 'tactial movement grid' and its variants) and didn't seem to come up with anything useful. I did find a post of someone wanting to accomplish the same thing, but no one responded.
I want to display a movement grid to the player, I'm simulating mini combat like in the RPG system 'd20 Modern' (actually building this for my in house group), and I want to display a grid to the player showing movement units. Since we have 2 guys on the team pretty good with art, I would prefer the grid to be dynamic. And I would prefer the engine knows so it can automatically center the unit in the square, and validate movement rules.
Ideas on a solution
1. I embed the grid on the texture and create a 'entity'/object to tell the engine where to begin drawing the grid. This means I would have to have fixed metrics for grid creation, and someone needs to place entity in world editor (I think this entity must be placed for all my solutions)
2. Dynamically create a plane and superimpose a grid on it, like in the world editor. But then the plane may intersect with elevated terrain.
3. Create a dynamic jpg/png with transparencies for the grid, and decal that on top of the terrain object
If you have any other ideas or resources you can point me to I would appreciate it. Sorry don't even know if the engine supports movement grids internally I'm still on 1.4.2 upgrading to 1.5 today of TGE, and re-learning engine C++ layout, and T-script. I am just happy I got it to build on Visual Studio 2008 yay!
Thanks for any help!
Sorry for the explanation, good to be back, seen so many changes since 2002, and hope the community is just as helpful. Here are my ideals, forgive me if they're stupid for accomplishing what I want to accomplish. I hope you will correct me or point me in the right direction to solve this. I find the current search on the website lacking (tried for an hour on 'tactial movement grid' and its variants) and didn't seem to come up with anything useful. I did find a post of someone wanting to accomplish the same thing, but no one responded.
I want to display a movement grid to the player, I'm simulating mini combat like in the RPG system 'd20 Modern' (actually building this for my in house group), and I want to display a grid to the player showing movement units. Since we have 2 guys on the team pretty good with art, I would prefer the grid to be dynamic. And I would prefer the engine knows so it can automatically center the unit in the square, and validate movement rules.
Ideas on a solution
1. I embed the grid on the texture and create a 'entity'/object to tell the engine where to begin drawing the grid. This means I would have to have fixed metrics for grid creation, and someone needs to place entity in world editor (I think this entity must be placed for all my solutions)
2. Dynamically create a plane and superimpose a grid on it, like in the world editor. But then the plane may intersect with elevated terrain.
3. Create a dynamic jpg/png with transparencies for the grid, and decal that on top of the terrain object
If you have any other ideas or resources you can point me to I would appreciate it. Sorry don't even know if the engine supports movement grids internally I'm still on 1.4.2 upgrading to 1.5 today of TGE, and re-learning engine C++ layout, and T-script. I am just happy I got it to build on Visual Studio 2008 yay!
Thanks for any help!
#2
Another option I was thinking about is using some sort of overlay, and decal that over the top of the object, hopefully the engine supports transparency. My final option after some thought was to hard code certain parameters for any type of "area" that they must be 'x' big in pixels/units, and use this special texture for the terrain.
I did look at Warscale's postings and I think that was option 1 where the grid is either part of the terrain texture, or superimposed over the top. But it has come a long way and it is very impressive.
Another option was I create a 'tile' block, and the entire floor or where the minitures would go is defined as a block then I would have specific boundaries I can use to determine where in the block the miniture should go, but then it puts a limit on what can be created 'block' wise, but I think this would be the far simplest approach.
EDITED
So now that I learned to speak English what I can do is confine the people who will create dungeons to using something like 'tile blogs' which are analagous to legos. Snap them together and voila new dungon. But I was hoping not to put such a restriction on encounter/area/dungeon designers in my group.
07/13/2008 (5:01 pm)
James, thanks for your answer. What you are advicing is what I meant for option #1. Just paint the picture onto the terrin, but then the terrain has to be clearly marked. Another option I was thinking about is using some sort of overlay, and decal that over the top of the object, hopefully the engine supports transparency. My final option after some thought was to hard code certain parameters for any type of "area" that they must be 'x' big in pixels/units, and use this special texture for the terrain.
I did look at Warscale's postings and I think that was option 1 where the grid is either part of the terrain texture, or superimposed over the top. But it has come a long way and it is very impressive.
Another option was I create a 'tile' block, and the entire floor or where the minitures would go is defined as a block then I would have specific boundaries I can use to determine where in the block the miniture should go, but then it puts a limit on what can be created 'block' wise, but I think this would be the far simplest approach.
EDITED
So now that I learned to speak English what I can do is confine the people who will create dungeons to using something like 'tile blogs' which are analagous to legos. Snap them together and voila new dungon. But I was hoping not to put such a restriction on encounter/area/dungeon designers in my group.
#3
07/14/2008 (10:29 am)
Are you thinking of a video game version of DnD Minis (minus the copyright infringement) ? I have long thought that would make an excellent online multiplayer game. 
Associate James Ford
Sickhead Games
Well the engine does not support movement grids internally. Couldn't you "paint" the grid texture onto the terrain itself as one of the terrain layers? You might not need a separate object for this. Of course handling movement along the grid or highlighting grid elements would be your own custom code somewhere...
You might be iterested in the "Warscale" .plan postings. It seems to be a turn-based rpg tactics like game with a grid on the terrain.