im planning on making a tool that can create the textfiles that lesson 23&10 use to set up the world, i was thinking of making it where you can add terrain too, but i was thinking for a good terrain that could mean map files as big as 30,000+ lines, that would effect the performance of the app huh? also, for the terrain in that map too, to save me some time i wanted for default terrain(flat) to fill in the space with verts between 4 coords i give it, i.e (5,5) (5,-5) (-5,-5) and (-5,5) then it would do somthing like this, (* = verts, # = space) (coords i gave in) * # # # # * # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # * # # # # * lets say the preset # of polys is set to 4... so it would add 1 vert in the middle and create... *--------* | \ # # / | | # \ / # | <--- pretend it added a vert in the middle =P | # / \ # | | / # # \ | *--------* basically what im saying is i want to make an app that takes 4 coords and a maxnumber of polys, and makes the grid of verts/polys for you so you can adjust them to make terrain. who thinks this is a good idea? (or a bad idea) Edited by - dirtypope on July 12, 2001 1:44:05 PM

Terrain engines are a complicated subject...

You really need level-of-detail (LOD) and all sorts of stuff with a terrain, because they can quickly grow to have a massive number of polygons. In other words, I think a completely different file format would be better, one that described curves or something so you could always change the lod without relying on polygons.

But a lot of people use polys for terrain, so it''s probably ok. Sorry to go off on a tangent

Other than that, that file format worries me because it uses polygons... really, triangles are much better.

I wrote my own ascii file format which uses triangles, and I think it''s a lot better than the lesson 10/23 one (sorry to whoever wrote them!)

The largest file in my format I have a the moment is about 900 kb (I don''t know how many lines that is, but it''s a lot). It doesn''t seem to affect the performace much, it takes about 1/4 to 1/2 a second to load.

Generating terrain, just by itself, is complicated... if I were you I''d write a terrain generator, and display the terrain it makes, and only then worry about saving the results.

Hi!!

I totaly agree....

First try to deal with the terrain itself....
It isn''t as simple as it might sound to make them look good!!

Take a look at out project and the terrain involved.....
Click here...

It looks good, and the LOD works fine to!! (Adjustable)!

First make it, adjust it, like it, adjust it more, love it...
Then you can try to save it into your own fileformat!!

Take Care!

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