HI all, just a quick Q.
Need to create some cave areas for an add-on I am working on, similar to the ones in the deep roads or the Dragon/Drake caves during Urn Quest.
It might seem silly, but are these interior or exterior levels? And if they are Exterior, how do you work with slopes etc... these are models such as tunnel slope etc... but do you just raise the terrain to match the tunnel slope height and then fill in around the edges so palyers can't see?
Any insight be grand and ta in advance.
Kil.
Caves - Interior or Exterior
Débuté par
BrianOTForest
, janv. 08 2010 05:27
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#2
Posté 08 janvier 2010 - 05:41
Bibdy
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Technically it can be either, but Interior is probably the best way to go, due to the sheer volume of models you can use in the place to make a cave system look good. Too many models in an exterior level, where everything is always loaded, and the thing can play havoc on memory usage. There are some wall pieces (pretty much both of the large corner pieces, at least), which have screwy geometry and you have to block them off with boulders or cairock5 or 6 so it doesn't look weird.
You use the room properties option (red/white button in the top bar) to assign which rooms can be lit by the selected room, which are visible, and which are literally connected to it (usually all 3 end up being the same, but there are some special cases if you make some really weird/awesome interconnected cave systems).
The downside is you can't create water planes, and you have to use collision props, or hidden objects to block off areas. There is no Terrain Blocking Tool you can use in an interior level (that I know of). There are some water objects you can use to make a river, like the big one that runs through the main room of Ortan Thaig, but making mini, flowing rivers in a cave isn't really possible.
Also, word of warning: don't build tunnels or rooms over the top of other tunnels or rooms. I made a really cool interconnected cave system 2 large rooms and 2 tunnels, but I realised that pathfinding wouldn't generate for the tunnel at the bottom, so I had to completely redesign one of the tunnels and make it go allllll the way around one of the larger rooms, which has kind of screwed up the flow of the level. It ended up having to be a lot bigger than I had originally anticipated because of that (prompting the need to put a merchant somewhere in the middle of it, or dungeon crawlers are going to get PISSED).
Similarly with outdoor canyon areas. Spent about 5 hours building a terrain map for a totally awesome open roof above a chasm, but lightmapping and pathfinding started screaming at me about having chunks being above other chunks and it wasn't able to render, making the map useless.
So, my advice is make it interior and stick to interconnecting the different pieces available to you, to keep things simple. But, if you want to get complex, try exterior out and see what you can do with it, such as hide it under the main cave system, but raise the floor to create your own custom floors and walls (don't try curving it over and making a roof with it, due to the problem I mentioned above) with the terrain map, but be aware of a high poly count and system requirements, since you can't isolate rooms in an exterior level the same way you can with interior.
You use the room properties option (red/white button in the top bar) to assign which rooms can be lit by the selected room, which are visible, and which are literally connected to it (usually all 3 end up being the same, but there are some special cases if you make some really weird/awesome interconnected cave systems).
The downside is you can't create water planes, and you have to use collision props, or hidden objects to block off areas. There is no Terrain Blocking Tool you can use in an interior level (that I know of). There are some water objects you can use to make a river, like the big one that runs through the main room of Ortan Thaig, but making mini, flowing rivers in a cave isn't really possible.
Also, word of warning: don't build tunnels or rooms over the top of other tunnels or rooms. I made a really cool interconnected cave system 2 large rooms and 2 tunnels, but I realised that pathfinding wouldn't generate for the tunnel at the bottom, so I had to completely redesign one of the tunnels and make it go allllll the way around one of the larger rooms, which has kind of screwed up the flow of the level. It ended up having to be a lot bigger than I had originally anticipated because of that (prompting the need to put a merchant somewhere in the middle of it, or dungeon crawlers are going to get PISSED).
Similarly with outdoor canyon areas. Spent about 5 hours building a terrain map for a totally awesome open roof above a chasm, but lightmapping and pathfinding started screaming at me about having chunks being above other chunks and it wasn't able to render, making the map useless.
So, my advice is make it interior and stick to interconnecting the different pieces available to you, to keep things simple. But, if you want to get complex, try exterior out and see what you can do with it, such as hide it under the main cave system, but raise the floor to create your own custom floors and walls (don't try curving it over and making a roof with it, due to the problem I mentioned above) with the terrain map, but be aware of a high poly count and system requirements, since you can't isolate rooms in an exterior level the same way you can with interior.
Modifié par Bibdy, 08 janvier 2010 - 05:43 .
#3
Posté 08 janvier 2010 - 06:14
FalloutBoy
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FYI, Deep Roads were interior room levels and Orzammar was exterior with large specialty pieces placed to for the walls and roof. There is project on this site where the devs placed a bunch of the raw lvl files used to build the OC, including all the dwarf levels.
I've tried building cave/tunnel levels both interior and exterior. I found interior much easier and by using a lot of extra wall pieces placed here and there, was able to make a it look fairly original.
Bibdy, I made the exact same mistake where I built a tunnel under another room. It would have been so cool too.
I've tried building cave/tunnel levels both interior and exterior. I found interior much easier and by using a lot of extra wall pieces placed here and there, was able to make a it look fairly original.
Bibdy, I made the exact same mistake where I built a tunnel under another room. It would have been so cool too.
#4
Posté 08 janvier 2010 - 06:42
Bibdy
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Yeah, exterior is fine for Orzammar, since its essentially just one big room. That's the kind of situation you'd want to use it. One, big, fancy piece of scenery. If you want to make a long, interconnected cave system, though, you'd probably be better off sticking with Interior so you can make use of the visibility graph and keep the level running smoothly for low-end systems.
Then again, its not like modder content is getting thrown onto the PS3 or XBox any time soon, so you can probably get away with going balls deep in poly count
Then again, its not like modder content is getting thrown onto the PS3 or XBox any time soon, so you can probably get away with going balls deep in poly count
#5
Posté 09 janvier 2010 - 11:37
BrianOTForest
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Thanks you two, that clears up a hell of a lot for me - time to get leveling.
Kil.
Kil.
