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Topic: Making a decent hill and a showcase...

monaster
The Afflicted

Joined: 28 Apr 2008
Posts: 530

Posted: 06-11-2008 05:33 AM

1) Making a decent hill...

I tried a few things to make a nice decent hill to build a big hallowed clip (let's just say "a building or many buildings") on it, but since I'm not very skilled with terrain editing (let's just say "I don't know ANYTHING about it and am thus forced to use GTK Radiant") I encountered some problems with this. The thing is, I need a somewhat huge hill - something around 6000x2000 - which is flattened at the top.

building

/------------\
/-----Hill------\
/---------------\
/_____\

Should look like above only without corners. After some experimenting I found a possibility to make that geometry by cutting and clipping a sphere brush! Unfortunately I created a very cornered and not smoothly rounded hill that way.
So is there a chance to make a "natural" looking hill only using the GTKRadiant and without adding three hours to compiling times?

PS: I fucked up the editor with one "idea" of mine: creating a huge bevel curve copying it and merging these two so that they form THIS:
_-_
/-----\
|-------|
|---------|
|-----------|
|-------------| (think of this one as a wonderfully rounded curve flattened at its top)

To make this curve into a 3d-hill I simply had to copy that curve, rotate it around the z-axis (90°), make a clone of the newly created two-curve-combination and then rotate it again 45° z-wise. If ANYONE is still reading and understanding this: the idea was great but it didn't work out after all because the final object's surface was fragged and nothing you could walk on without bumping into or walking through the next curves remains.

Whatever, that PS-section is only for interested people who want to know how NOT to make a hill for Q3A, the important stuff stands above that. Thanks for helping in advance!

2) Making a showcase...

How can you build a showcase with glasses on every side (except the floor) and seperated by extra brushes on the egdes (forming a solid frame) WITHOUT having the problem that these extra brushes become invisible if seen through one of the glass windows on the other side? I know this sounds kind of abstract so here's a screenshot for better understanding what I want to say:

(Dammit is there a way to upload the scrnsht directly from one's desktop without having it uploaded elsewhere before?)

As you can see (well, not yet let's just hope you know what I mean purely by text description) the glasses on the other side of the showcase seem to have free space between them. And I can't figure out what there is to be done against that bug(?).
By the way, the showcase is nothing more than a brush hollowed two times and then textured with common/glass on one side and common/nodraw on the other to avoid bugs and problems with light reflection and so on.
The second question related to this vitrine is how can I manage to put something INSIDE this thing without having it disappear (thinking about it, this is same problem as with the extra brushes mentioned before). There already is a socket with that "monitor brush" also seen floating above the showcase put onto it inside and as you can see (or NOT see) Q3A pretends to have nothing there. Again I am looking forward to any tips and tricks.

One last thing: forget about the fu***** "/-_" drawnings, obviously this forum can't handle too much spaces ( ).

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obsidian
I'm the dude!

Joined: 04 Feb 2002
Posts: 12498

Posted: 06-11-2008 06:51 AM

For various reasons, it is best not to use a patchmesh or a sphere brush for terrain (it's better to avoid sphere brushes for anything for that matter). Most terrain is created using the "tri-soup" method. There are also a few programs that can generate the terrain for you.

id Software has some pretty good documentation on this, although a little old-school. This goes though how to use Easygen to generate your terrain from heightmap and then use vertex alpha blending to blend textures across the terrain mesh.

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/teamar ... tion_1.zip

A little more up to date but more advanced (harder) tutorials by Sock on manually clipping and placing brushes and then using Q3Map2 style vertex alpha blending for texture blending.

http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles.htm

About the showcase, common/glass isn't the best shader for glass. You'll have to make your own. Take a look at any number of custom maps and try to make your own glass shader based on theirs. You're going to have to learn to write shaders sooner or later.

http://www.robotrenegade.com/q3map2/doc ... index.html

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monaster
The Afflicted

Joined: 28 Apr 2008
Posts: 530

Posted: 06-11-2008 07:28 AM

Thank you!!!
monaster

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ix-ir
Veteran

Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 192

Posted: 06-11-2008 06:29 PM

A word of advice on terrain - for gameplay, compile and effort reasons flat terrain is best but obviously doesn't have the visual impact you want. My suggestion is to focus on the edges of terrain, height level changes and where it meets walls. By making subtle changes here you can make flat and manageable terrains that still feel 'organic'.

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sock
The Illuminated

Joined: 08 Sep 2000
Posts: 1085

Posted: 06-12-2008 02:08 AM

ix-ir wrote:
focus on the edges of terrain, height level changes and where it meets walls. By making subtle changes here you can make flat and manageable terrains that still feel 'organic'.

Wise words indeed, bumpy terrain does not produce good gameplay. Always try to create subtle changes to the height for the player (especially if it is suppose to be organic soil/sand materials) Otherwise the player will feel like they are on a plank rolling across a field!

Sims

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Thank you!!!monaster

Thank you!!!
monaster