Original Post
okay, i have a question for the gurus. maybe it''s been answered, but tragically the search feature has been disabled and i''m not that patient to search throught hundreds of posts. I posted this earlier in the newbie sections, but didn''t get much of a response, got told this might be a question for this forum...
I''m working on a game with some friends in my spare time, we have most of our design done and are preparing to start programming (website will be up sometime over break). Anyways, i''m trying to figure out a level format for our game. We want both indoor and outdoor environments. The graphics aren''t going to be cutting edge by any means, Everquest quality, maybe a bit better with the terrain engine (it''s our first time doing anything this scale, and this in-depth, so we''re keeping our expectations as real as possible). I''m trying to figure out a format for the levels (zones in our case, mmorpg, and we don''t want to deal with a continuous world right now). There''s not much documentation on these things that really answers the questions i have. I understand octtrees and am starting to get BSP trees and ROAM (need to look at more terrain lod algorithms)
I''m thinking about writing an exporter for 3ds max to do it all using maxscript rather than right a standalone editor. I want to make a pre-made library of map objects to import into the maps. Indoor maps i figure can be just one large BSP object. Outdoor terrain can be represented by a large greyscale bitmap for heights of a mesh with some sort of LOD, and the map objects loaded in at particular points as exported.
i wanted to make a texture library - one big file of textures, the header of which is just file names and offsets to postions where the images actually begin. Max would save the name of which texture went to which polygons and the mapping coords.
How to do interactive objects like switches or doors i figure can be done with a scripting language (yet to be determined) and object properties as entered into 3ds max.
Yes, i have the Gamasutra paper "Case Study: Using Max Script for building Game Levels" and i''m reading through it all, i''m looking for other perspectives and ideas in addition so i can make more informed choices about things.
Anyways, it''s not very well thought out yet, i know. these are just the nightmarish questions that haunt my dreams at night. I''m probably completely off base with a lot of stuff. If anyone has any insight into how they''ve implemented levels, or reference to any good tutorials/resources, it would be much appreciated. I''d rather do this right the first time so that i don''t have to go back and struggle through it all.