Caves
by Gary Roberson · in Torque Game Engine · 04/15/2011 (2:25 pm) · 4 replies
I want to add caves in my level. (What is an adventure without them?)
So what is the best approach?
1. It seems the excavate menu item isn't doing what I think it is supposed to do? I wanted to dig a hole in a side of a hill, but that isn't happening. I also tried the flatten menu item. This isn't working the way I thought it would either! (For me this is the easiest way, but how do I make it work!)
2. Design the cave as a seperate .mis file, then when the character gets to the entrance in the main .mis file, add a area trigger to switch between the two files. (Yeah, I know I will have to do some coding to make this system work)
3. lastly, design the cave as a mesh using a 3d modeler. (I use TrueSpace, and I am quite proficient in it)
Convert it to a .dif using constructor, and then use an interior for the project!
So what is the best approach?
1. It seems the excavate menu item isn't doing what I think it is supposed to do? I wanted to dig a hole in a side of a hill, but that isn't happening. I also tried the flatten menu item. This isn't working the way I thought it would either! (For me this is the easiest way, but how do I make it work!)
2. Design the cave as a seperate .mis file, then when the character gets to the entrance in the main .mis file, add a area trigger to switch between the two files. (Yeah, I know I will have to do some coding to make this system work)
3. lastly, design the cave as a mesh using a 3d modeler. (I use TrueSpace, and I am quite proficient in it)
Convert it to a .dif using constructor, and then use an interior for the project!
About the author
#2
04/16/2011 (5:15 pm)
Quote:It seems the excavate menu item isn't doing what I think it is supposed to do?Excavate will simply lower the height of the terrain under the brush. Flatten averages out all the different heights under the brush. TGE's terrain, like pretty much any heightmap-based terrain system, cannot do caves, because every vertex can only move up and down. To mae a cave, you'll need to create it either as a mesh or a DIF (as Mike said), then use the 'set empty' tool to make a hole in your terrain where the cave is.
#3
tbarlow
05/08/2012 (5:46 pm)
I am looking for a way to put caves and stuff like that in my game how is it down is there a program to do it or how does it work I have T3Dtbarlow
#4
05/09/2012 (1:49 pm)
The most common way is to create your cave in a modeling program and import it into the level. Then set the terrain right around the mouth of the cave to empty so that the player can enter your model's area. 
Torque Owner Mike Rowley
Mike Rowley
What I ended up doing was making my cave as a dif. In order to make it look ok sticking up thru the ground, I had to lower the grid size on the terrain, then delete one plane. (sorry if my terminology is off. I'm not an artist) My cave was small, so it worked ok. The nice thing, was I could spawn ai inside it.