Sauerbraten Terrain Editing

by Gilt on 04/13/2006 05:24, 30 messages, last message: 05/13/2006 20:18, 9738 views, last view: 05/05/2024 02:20

Do you think we need more tools for this? What are your thoughts on how this should work? etc etc discuss

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#11: Re: questions

by Aardappel_ on 04/13/2006 19:38, refers to #10

I guess if noone wants anything specifically, we'll leave it as is :)

One trick to make steeper terrain is to create it in cube and then import it :)

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#12: Re: questions

by dbox__ on 04/13/2006 20:52, refers to #10

I noticed the editheight command in the Sauerbraten documentation a while back and tried to experiment with it using the latest Sauerbraten release but it didn't seem to do anything.

Is this currently only available if I build sauer from the tip in CVS?

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#13: hmm...

by metlslime on 04/13/2006 21:09

I haven't done any huge outdoor levels, but from what I have done, the problems are:

1. difficulty doing steep slopes in terrain (there is a trick to doing it with layers, and I did this sucessfully in metl3, but there are limits to when it can look good.)

2. hard lighting edges between quads. This quickly kills any illusion of the terrain being a natural thing. I would like to see this fixed by specifying in the config file that certain texture slots be "smooth lit" which would mean that the lightmaps are fixed to remove seams between two neighbors if they both have the same texture slot (and it's flagged to be smooth.) This could mean putting the quads together on the actual lightmap, or could mean adjusting edge pixels until they both match. Arghrad for q2 had some code to do something like this.

From an editing standpoint, the basic H + wheel seems to work pretty well (other than the steep slope problem.)

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#14: ..

by makkE on 04/13/2006 21:11

Yes, imho the problem is the lightning.
Has to be smooth on terrain. Imho it pretty much ruins any terrain atm.

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#15: Re: questions

by nieb on 04/14/2006 00:47, refers to #10

Random terrain generation, and resizeable brushes for raise, lower, and level could be useful.

If its not to much trouble ;)

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#16: Re: hmm...

by Aardappel_ on 04/14/2006 01:07, refers to #13

the smooth lighting is a seperate problem, and we are actually working on that right now.

The question is more about if there would be better ways to do landscape editing, within the constraints of sauer's geometry representation.

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#17: Re: hmm...

by shadow,516 on 04/14/2006 01:51, refers to #16

Random terrain generation, RGB bitmap to sauer conversion and viceversa (R=X, G=Y, B=Z), makehill command. Not sure how feasible any of this is, but I'm sure someone would use it.

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#18: ..

by Mad Merv on 04/14/2006 03:34

it would be nice to import 2d heightmaps, is this implemented?

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#19: Re: smaller gridsize?

by Sparr on 04/14/2006 05:45, refers to #5

smaller gridsize "cant" happen, due to some pretty slick coding in the depths of rht world model system. anything smaller and you get division by zero errors in parts of the code that would be difficult to change.

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#20: ..

by Mad Merv on 04/15/2006 01:53

you can change the way mapmodels move in the world, and then scale upwards. see spamassassins screenshots for an example. it is possible, I think fairly simply, by changing the parameters of the player and essentially scaling the non-level geometry

it was a design choice Aard made for the vision he had for Sauer, it is obviously for a computer built roughly 2-3 years ago, and not for contemporary hardware

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#21: Re: ..

by kurtis84 on 04/22/2006 04:40, refers to #20

I think with the H key feature, and the Q key, and the F key, a mapper should do just fine for terrain. I actually just started using the H key, and I wish I had done so much earlier...I could have built the terrain in k_rpg1 much faster...yes I used the Q key method on the whole thing.

Gilt: what you have done already works great...if you can get a cool idea to add something else, thats fine, but I do not see a reason to complain the way it is now :)

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#22: mwahahaha!!

by Gilt on 05/08/2006 03:24

http://img66.imageshack.us/my.php?image=holes1mk.jpg
http://img480.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rock0nf.jpg

guess how long these took me to make!

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#23: Re: mwahahaha!!

by Passa on 05/08/2006 04:08, refers to #22

several hours? ;-)

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#24: Re: mwahahaha!!

by kurtis84 on 05/08/2006 04:34, refers to #23

Ok, you have my interest :)

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#25: Re: mwahahaha!!

by MitaMAN in the cave on 05/08/2006 05:05, refers to #24

mine also

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#26: a little trouble

by kurtis84 on 05/09/2006 00:40, refers to #25

Gilt: I'm having trouble with the new feature that the H key has...the one that actually creates 4 new cubes when you pull up on the top of a cube. It doesn't appear to always do whats expected. I have seen it make a full-grid cube at times, instead of only pulling it up one unit at a time. This is no big deal to work with, but I didn't think it was always doing what you expected it to. Has anyone else had trouble with this?

Also, I have seen a couple other new behavior oddities while editing. Often, if I select a previously warped cube with the same size grid it was made at, and try to change it's shape a second time, it resets itself back to a complete cube at whatever grid size I'm on...a few times this one made me curse out loud, because I used to be able to do this, and I didn't expect it :)

P.S. you going to share some more info on that new thing you posted here?

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#27: Re: a little trouble

by Gilt on 05/09/2006 03:18, refers to #26

meh, forgot about that old editheight/H key thing. that was so two weeks ago. get with the times!

for the solid cube thing.. what's the number of cubes in your selection when you try editing it? maybe the cube got subdivided at some point without you knowing... which might not be good either, but it depends.

as for more info, well I know you're probably not a programmer, but maybe you'll get the gist of this script?

alias "brush_2" [
alias brushname "Circle 2-1 Brush"
clearbrush
brushhandle 2 2
bv 1 3 "0 0 1 "
bv 2 4 "0 1 2 1 "
bv 3 3 "0 0 1 "
]

don't worry if you can't write most of that yourself... I didn't write that one myself either :)

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#28: Re: a little trouble

by kurtis84 on 05/10/2006 18:07, refers to #27

You're correct, the cubes were subdivided already, so that answers that.

The script is a bit over my head, but I think I see what it's doing. Is this something I could be using now in my autoexec, or for the next release?

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#29: Re: a little trouble

by Gilt_ on 05/10/2006 19:01, refers to #28

no, it's a next release type of thing. that's why I'm being kind of vague with it. I'm just kind of excited by how easy it'll be to make some cool stuff, along with just how smooth yet still well defined the lighting is making everything.

but yeah, you won't actually have to write scripts like that yourself unless you want to. you'll be able to create brushes in game and the engine will spit out the code, or you can just use the defaults. the worst you might have to do is copy and paste it somewhere and change the number in the brush_x alias.

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#30: Re: a little trouble

by MeatROme on 05/13/2006 20:18, refers to #29

Rockin!
I was kinda hoping this was a preview on the next step in scripting ... now just where will I find the time to checkout CVS and take a peek ?!?
But if your release cycles hold steady it'll only be another fortnight to wait ... I'll try my best to remain calm ;-)

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