Cool thing I did with 3D Tile engine...

Potsticker · 2000-03-12T16:47:41

Figured I''d share this with you guys, because, well, I think its nifty. Now, I had been working on a 2D isometric engine with different elevation levels, when Bracket posted his article on using D3D. I modified my code in a couple of days to take advantage of his article (Which was very helpful, btw) and recreated the engine, only now with smooth looking hills. But in my old code I had created terrain transitions similar to the article posted by Dave so & so, a while back about using overlays of tiles to create these transitions. (look in previously featured articles, its a good article I thought) The thing is he had 4 different tiles for instances where there was one side border (N, S, E, W) etc... Basically, he need a lot of art work... Well, with some nifty tricks with setting up textures, you can use just ONE texture to create all 4 Transitions. This is cool, because it means if your art group draws say, 8 different types of borders for one side, you can use those in every direction, meaning, you get the most out of the artwork, and need to load less of it, and it will look pretty good (Does some funny stuff because of sizes... but anyway) Here is how it works in psuedo code, I''d suggest getting a piece of paper to help you work through it. To rotate a texture, you just need to reassign the texture values appropriately. The texture values where the ones set like (If these are slightly incorrect I''m sorry, I''m doing this from memory here....) the tv, and tu might be off for 1 and 2. (in other words, reverse them) Vertex[0].tv = 0.0f; Vertex[0].tu = 0.0f; Vertex[1].tv = 1.0f; Vertex[1].tu = 0.0f; Vertex[2].tv = 0.0f; Vertex[2].tu = 1.0f; Vertex[3].tv = 1.0f; Vertex[3].tu = 1.0f; So that would be for a texture in the ''normal position'' I call it North Facing. I assume the default is north. But supposed that border is on the east side... Think about the vertices Bracket used, they aren''t in a perfect clockwise, fashion. So 1->3, 2->0 0->1 3->2 in other words Vertex[2].tv = 0.0f; Vertex[2].tu = 0.0f; Vertex[3].tv = 1.0f; Vertex[3].tu = 0.0f; Vertex[0].tv = 0.0f; Vertex[0].tu = 1.0f; Vertex[1].tv = 1.0f; Vertex[1].tu = 1.0f; Now your texture, is if I''ve done this right, (did it right in code, you might need to experiment) Rotated 90 degrees. You can reset these for all different directions. The only code you have to figure out, is to decide which direction to rotate it. You can check out a little demo of it at - No source code yet, I''m sorry, its just not ready for public consumption. http://www.speakeasy.org/~tredfern/ShatterRealms.zip BTW - You might notice some transparency issues. A few people have told me about this. All I can say, is if you do experience that, try replacing the transparent color in the art work, with black. If that doesn''t work, I''m sorry, its just a test build, and it works on my machine( and many others as well) ;P

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by Potsticker March 06, 2000 02:28 PM

11 comments, last by Potsticker 24 years, 6 months ago

Delisk

122

March 12, 2000 03:23 PM

Look good for me!

Make me think of age of empire, good luck!

chippydip

122

March 12, 2000 03:33 PM

Its working great now! Nice job

I would suggest that you start drawing your tiles a little off the edge of the screen and continue until a little past the oposite edge so that you don''t get the jagged edge... That edge looks kinda ok in games with flat tiles, but with the height data, the edge is often pretty crooked which makes it look like the program is messed up when its really working fine. Also, if there is an easy way to put a time delay on the F4 key that would be nice. At first I thought it wasn''t working, but then I found that you just have to press it *really* fast and its fine. (I had the same problem with my last game and came up with a pretty bad patch... I kept a counter and only checked keystates every couple frames. If anyone knows a better way of doing this, I''d really like to know!)

Other than that, great job! (Oh, and I got about 75fps on my Athlon 500, 128 RAM, ATI All-in-Wonder Pro (16MB)

Potsticker

Author

122

March 12, 2000 04:47 PM

Thanks for taking a look at it. I agree about the edge thing, I''m still figuring out where the interface elements are going to go, so I''m not going to worry about moving it around until I work that out a little bit more. I know about the F4 key thing, I''m not too worried about those elements though because someone else is supposed to write the ''real'' interface code, but I could put a little flag in there. (Set it when the key goes down, so code only fires once, and once key is up, reset it...) I was getting frustrated at it myself earlier today

hehe thekid, you know I would release the source code except for a few issues...

1) Not all the source code belongs to me, as I''m working on it with a few people, and just for their sake, I can''t release their elements.
2) I don''t think the source would be particularly helpful. Some of the modules are getting huge, and finding my own way around is sometimes difficult.

Now, if I have time, which is unlikely, but I''ll try and break it down into elements that would make sense, but if you have a specific question, I can help you and provide you with source about how I resolved that issue.

I''m not trying to hide this information or be secretive, its just not very releasable at this time.

Oh, and I think its a hybrid of DX6 and 7.

And I need to get a new machine, this old 200MMX gets only around 30-50 fps....

The Pony Lab

Cool thing I did with 3D Tile engine...

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