flux

I came to the site today to make a post for help with a tool I'm thinking of starting and I see on the main page about a mapping contest. Incredible timing.

I'm nearing the end of my Masters degree in which I am concentrating in Computer Graphics. What I would like is some input into what would make a better Map Editor as I am trying to gear my thesis around some kind of Terrain/Map editor. The problem is just creating a map editor is not enough. There needs to be something about this editor that sets it apart from the rest. It needs to implement some technique you don't normally find in traditional editors.

I'll give you a couple ideas of what I am looking for:

1) Slope indications: Within the BF2 Editor it is impossible to determine how steep slopes really are. There is a process one must go through to determine if a slope is too steep to walk or drive up. The editor should provide some indicator as to how steep slopes are. This should be an overlay that can be toggled on/off.

2) Road Tool: Creating roads can be a real pain, especially when you want to change major features under or around roads you have already placed. The road tool needs to be an additional layer 'on top of' the actual terrain. This will allow the user to move the road independently of the terrain. This will also allow modification to the terrain and still have to road carve out of the resulting terrain.

Ideally I'm looking for features more like #1 as it deals more with Computer Graphics/Visualization, but new tools like #2 will also work.

So as you all create your own maps, make note of features that would make your job easier.

I appreciate any help, and hopefully I can create something useful for the next contest.

__________________
flux
[tg-c1]

asch

* The capability to create tunnels or overhangs.

Granted, the game engine needs to support this also.

__________________
| My Maps

Gaming Videos by Tactical Gamers

Fear the Frog! | Kill the Frog! | An Inconvenient Truth

"Support game play in a near-simulation environment. Where the focus of play would not be solely on doing what it takes to win, but doing so utilizing real-world combat strategy and tactics rather than leveraging exploits provided to players by the design of the game engine, regardless of the level of advantage, if any, it gives over the opposing team." -- Tactical Gamer Primer

flux

Yeah, keep in mind this editor is going to be generic but I hope to have "plugins" to allow game specific features.

I actually considered focusing the entire editor around being able to easily create tunnels. I have yet to figure out how to accomplish this The best I've come up with is to create the terrain as normal, and then have tools to do intersections with predefined/user defined objects. So if you intersected a cylinder into the side of a hill, the hill would have a hole cut into the side of it in the shape of the cylinder.

And then there is the issue of the game engine supporting these types of meshes. The thing about rendering terrain is you generally only have a single height value for any given x,y coordinate, which makes generating the terrain very easy. Once you add tunnels, that simple algorithm can no longer be used.

Great suggestion. You may have inspired me to continue in this direction

__________________
flux
[tg-c1]

wushuhero

please do,it can open up a cornicopia of new options in terms of map making

__________________
"The Taoist sage has no ambitions, therefore he can never fail. He who never fails always succeeds. And he who always succeeds is all- powerful." -- Lao Tzu

ingame name: Zuiquan1

WhiskeySix

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... THAAAT's why there's no tunnels? damn.. I've always wondered about that!! like why aren't there more secret entrances and the like... especially on maps like kubra... or why the east-mine and west-mine entrances aren't connected somehow...


guess this explains why you can't have truely vertical surfaces either? (thinking SF-grapling hook)

cool stuff! well.. not really cool.. but.. uh.. good to know

__________________




PoE2 Version 2.5 Overview | Get started with PoE2 (for free!)

flux

Vertical surfaces is more of a texturing issue. Again you only get one value for a given x,y coordinate, so if you have a vertical cliff you have several points sharing the same x,y coordinate. In this situation each of those points gets the same texture value and what you end up with is a stretching or repeating effect. You have probably seen it on custom maps that try to make their mountains too steep.

Which brings up another very good point, how to texture caves. crap

__________________
flux
[tg-c1]

WhiskeySix

this may be a silly question, but what about mountain shaped buildings?

(think the stairway's up through the heart of kubra-damn)

__________________




PoE2 Version 2.5 Overview | Get started with PoE2 (for free!)

flux

Yeah, this is how it is traditionally handled. The problem with that is you still have to carve out an area for the "building", otherwise you get terrain sticking into your "building"/cave. Battlefield Vietnam used this technique as well as a few bf42 mods.

Using a "building" as a cave is definitely one way to go about it, but with this method you have to create a model, which is done outside the terrain editing tool. I was hoping to find some way of doing most of the work in the terrain tool.

So anyway, I'm not looking for answers to problems, just the problems themselves

Keep up the suggestions.

__________________
flux
[tg-c1]

Kilrogg

The engine does not support vertical terrain or hollow terrain, making an editor from scratch isn't going to make that any more possible.

flux

The features of this editor do not have to be supported by any one engine. I posted in this forum since we were having a mapping contest for BF2. But yes, if all you are interested in is a BF2 map editor then talking about caves and vertical cliffs is a moot point.

__________________
flux
[tg-c1]

wushuhero

were theres a will, theres a way, or in this case a flux

__________________
"The Taoist sage has no ambitions, therefore he can never fail. He who never fails always succeeds. And he who always succeeds is all- powerful." -- Lao Tzu

ingame name: Zuiquan1

asch

I'd also like to see randomized terrain generation.

__________________
| My Maps

Gaming Videos by Tactical Gamers

Fear the Frog! | Kill the Frog! | An Inconvenient Truth

"Support game play in a near-simulation environment. Where the focus of play would not be solely on doing what it takes to win, but doing so utilizing real-world combat strategy and tactics rather than leveraging exploits provided to players by the design of the game engine, regardless of the level of advantage, if any, it gives over the opposing team." -- Tactical Gamer Primer

Kilrogg

Most mappers use Terragen to generate a realistic terrain then import it into BF2 and adjust it. That's what I do anyway. You need a lot of tweaking in Terragen to make a good terrain though

flux

Yeah, I'm not inclined to do a full blown random generator, but maybe what I will do is allow you to select an area and add some noise to it. I'll have to play around with that. I find tools like Terragen add too much noise which creates annoying sharp 'hills' which you have to smooth out in the BF2 editor. So maybe I can add 'smooth' noise. But really I don't see that is being too useful.

So besides costing money, what do you have against the existing fractal terrain tools? Are they missing features too?

I kinda like Terragen becuase it allows you to do an initial run by laying out major features by hand, and then add some randomness on top of that. I don't like trial and error method you have to use with it, but I'm fairly patient.

Actually I'm remembering some ideas I had on this...

Allow the user to draw major features. This could be done with different brush colors. So different colors could be assigned to features such as Mountain, River beds, rolling hills, flat areas. These would be layed down by the user in very broad strokes. Maybe even allow general height identification through color intensity. The tool would then allow you to generate fractal terrains consistent with your "Feature Mapping".

I like this idea as it gives you more control over what you are generating as opposed to continually hitting Generate on the entire map which generates wildly different features. This way the major features stay somewhat the same.

__________________
flux
[tg-c1]

Kilrogg

I just put a minor blur on the heightmap in Photoshop before importing to BF2 and it fixes the sharp edges issue.