Terrain Sizes bigger than 512x512... Are they absolutly necessary?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Terrain Sizes bigger than 512x512... Are they absolutly necessary?
| ||
| Hi Guys... I got a question for you all here. Is it absolutly necessary to have terrains bigger than 512x512? I've found that a terrain size of 256x256 seems to be big enough for a game level... I just want to get some input here as to what everybody thinks about this and what would be a decent terrain size for a game project? Thank's Guys... |
| ||
| In no way is it necessary that you make your terrains 512x512. It all comes down to what works for the situation you are using the terrain in. |
| ||
| If it looks good at 256x256, when why not keep it at 256x256? |
| ||
| That's what I was thinking too, But Im' currently designing a terrain editor and I've noticed that some of the other terrain editors have the option to the user to allow them to make terrains larger than 256x256. I also agree that a terrain of 256x256 seems to fit the bill pretty dam good! However though would you recommend that I make the same option available in my terrain editor to other users that may want a larger terrain size, And if so... What should be the maxium size I should set it at? Thank's again guys for your replies on this as this will help me decide on what to put this at in the terrain editor! |
| ||
| I've got a question...I don't yet have Blitz3D, but plan to soon...but haveing played around with the Castle demo and such... Is there a way to have a infinately scrollable terrain? meaning that when you cross over one side you pop up on the opposite side...Erm I know how to do that with entityes and such...but once you reach the edge of a terrain how can you make it look like you arn't at the edge and the terrain looks to continue on forever? I guess if you look at something like StarSiege Tribes and such...infinately scrollable terrains...if you keep running in the same direction and you pass the same locations over and over, even though it looks onscreen like the terrain goes on forever and you never see any sort of "popping" or teleporting effect occur because you really just popped from one side to another... |
| ||
| I've not really used terrains but assuming your heightmap is continuous one solution would be to make the heightmap twice the size of what you need i.e. if the terrain is 256x256 make it 512x512 and duplicate the 256x256 4 times (top-left top-right etc..) Then when the player gets to within 128 units in the x or z direction of the terrain edge - just move it to the opposite side of the terrain - which will be identical. Assume center is 256,256. if x < 128 x=384 - (128 - x) if x > 384 x=128 + (x - 384) if z < 128 z=384 - (128 - z) if z > 384 z=128 + (z - 384) Not sure if this'll make any sense to you but hopefully you get the idea. |
| ||
| That all depends on how smooth you want it to look, and how large of an area you have to cover. If you want to cover a 2 kilometer wide area because you're making a racing game and you don't want the player to be able to see past the edge of the terrain, but you also don't want to stick giant mountains right next to the track, then a 1024x1024 heightmap might make sense. Also if you're using a Blitz terrain, with a high res heightmap the terrain can be very smooth up close and yet still not use a whole lot of polygons. But if there's not enough height data to have a height change every meter, then you're not gonna get that kind of resolution up close and Blitz will just waste the extra polygons or use them farther away. I think it just wastes them. (Ie, uses a higher res grid but only does linear interpolation so the height changes are still rough.) Anyhow, what they said is true. If your game looks fine with 256, then why are you even asking? :-) If you like how it looks then there's no reason at all to use more polygons just for the sake of using more. |
| ||
| @ sswift Anyhow, what they said is true. If your game looks fine with 256, then why are you even asking? :-) If you like how it looks then there's no reason at all to use more polygons just for the sake of using more. The reason I asked this question is because im' building a terrain editor that will later on be released to the Blitz community along with my world builder as well and I wanted to see exactly how many people would respond to this question to better help me make a decision on what limits I should set in my terrain editor. I saw Total Terrain have a max limit of 1024x1024 in size so I was wondering what limits I should use for my terrain editor. I just wanted to make an terrain editor that would handle the desired need at that moment you might say! I hope this answers your question now! |
| ||
| Oh well in that case, I'd try to support up to at least 4096x4096. I'm pretty sure you can make a terrain that high res in Blitz, and even if you can't, it's still useful for if you want to design a large world, say, 8 kilometers wide, and divide it up, but create it all at the same time. So I'd say support as high a res as you can. I definitely would want at LEAST 1024x1024, and I think that I may have used a 2048x2048 map on a terrain once. |
| ||
| We rarely needed more than 128x128 heightmaps for Unreal Tournament 2003. |
| ||
| Since you're asking: The higher the better, sswift is right on this one... |
| ||
| My vote is for as large as they want. Now if that makes you change the whole design then maybe it's a bit late for that, but if it is a minor change then more options is usually better. |
| ||
| I think you're learning a valuable lesson in developing software - you can't ask people if they want something. The answer will always be "yes". You have to present options and let them choose one. It's the only way to keep software under control. |
| ||
| "We rarely needed more than 128x128 heightmaps for Unreal Tournament 2003." And you rarely could see more than oh... 300 feet in UT 2003, right? :-) Well at least that's what I recall from the screenshots I saw. |
| ||
| The point is, we could have used insane detail on the terrains but didn't. Use what you need. |
| ||
| Im using 1024x1024 giving me an effective size of 4x4 kilometres - nice! Terrain height changes every 2 metres, so that's enough detail, but I have an area the size of a largish island which can hold several communities. |
| ||
| I was using a 2048x2048 texture for a terrain, and I ad some artifacts. Namely, height changes would look like great big steps. Reducing the polycount just made the landscape judder and twist as it approached, and the "steps" were still rendered at close range. After reading this thread I suddenly twigged that I didn't need such a huge heightmap. I figured the bigger it was, the smoother my terrain. Thankfully, common sense struck home and I realsde that a 256x256 terrain fixed all my problems and allowed me to slash the polycount without hurting the appearence of the landscape. I still have a large texturemap for the colouring, although I can get away with 512x512 for that, and then but a repeating detail texture on another layer, at 128x128. This seemed a relevant point for this thread when I embarked upon it... :D |
| ||
| The other advantage of large terrains as swift mentioned is that you might want to have a large terrain by only use 256x256 terrains but several of them, therefore you'd want to create one big terrain then chop it up. |
   |