Original Post
When I make buildings for my favorite game, I create the shapes in WorldCraft 3.3 and my game has a set of tools that takes the resulting .map file and turn it into a lit playable object through which my in-game personification can walk and play. The tools generate portals and can detect where light from the outside can shine inside the object, and it knows when the player is deep enough inside the building that it no longer needs to render the outside terrain. I need to know how to convert these map files on my own to create some kind of solid objects for my own game engine and my future game projects, but I have found nothing at all related to building these kinds of tool chains. I am wondering what kinds of resources are available for creating these kinds of tools. I can create BSP trees and light maps, but what about portal generation? How can I divide the shapes such that I can determine that I should not draw terrain if the player is standing here, here, or here? I know how to use this data in the engine, if only I could just generate it from a .map file. I would really like a book that covers these topics if one exists. If not, let this serve as a hint to any future authors out there. Any other resources on this subject would be helpful. Thank you, L. Spiro
