I was curious if anyone had any general ideas on how this is normally implemented, such as in the 3D Mario and Zelda games... The terrain''s y values vary across the landscape, and I assume that as the character moves, his/her y value must update according to the position of the landscape he/she is on. But how would you dynamically calculate the y-value for the position of the terrain mesh that the character is currently standing on? I haven''t really programmed anything yet.. just thinking. I''m planning on using DirectX''s X Files to import meshes of these objects. Thanks for your speculations! -Riskbreaker

from what I can tell, most just use collision detection of the player''s bounding volume (such as a sphere, ellipse, or box) with all of the terrain''s triangles, as opposed to calculating terrain height at a given point.

warning - uncertain of following method
if you do want to your method, however, it shouldn''t be too difficult. just use the x-z position to find which triangle he''s standing on and use a weighted average of the heights of the 3 vertices to get your player''s height.
end warning

hope that helps

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- Daria

DirectInput8 with the Keyboard , DirectInput8 with the Mouse , Using DirectX Audio 8