🔒 Locked

Multilevel Terrain

Started by xGambit Oct 25, 2000 at 10:21 PM 1 replies 350+ views

Original Post

Oct 25, 2000 at 10:21 PM

I''m trying to get 2 layer terrain to work using the land1 example. For simplicity I am using the same heightmap, shademap, etc. as for the layer 1 terrain and I made sure the layers part of the terrain settings was set to 2 but I am not certain how to transform the second layer up above the character. I tried to run the program anyway and it appears to get stuck in an infinite loop the first time PR_GetTerrainHeight is called. Has anyone done this before who can explain to me what I need to check for?

ChrisE

Oct 25, 2000 at 10:26 PM

Multilevel terrain does not work with the new terrain engine at all. Unless you used a smaller tilable texture on the ceiling instead of the big 2048x2048 one used on the ground, it would be a memory hog. Also generating shadows with a second layer would need a different algorithm.

If you have any suggestions how to set this up let me know for PR4.

Chris

xGambit

Oct 25, 2000 at 11:06 PM

Hmm...How much memory does it add?

In our particular idea we want to place the character in a large cave during parts of the game. I don''t know if this will help, but while it would require 2 levels of terrain I would expect the total number of polygons that needed to be rendered could easily be the same or even less than a single layer wide-open terrain due to the fact that you are surrounded by walls continuing off into the distance. I guess that wouldn''t help the texture memory however, but if memory becomes a real problem I could probably make the level half as big.

If not, is power render flexible enough to allow us to write our own terrain-like engine that is customized to do what we want?

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.