mmorpg/rpg -How it's made? - terrain + character

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howkerman
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon Sep 14, 2009 1:47 pm
Location: Planet Earth

mmorpg/rpg -How it's made? - terrain + character

Post by howkerman »

Hi there, I'm planning to create a RPG.
What I saw in some mmorpgs, is that they have a huge world. I know they build it up in zones (heightmaps i think), but If I'm on the end of the zone, you can see the next zone?? How do they do it?
Aren't these things heightmaps? How do they do this?

And about the characters, how do they put clothes and armour, weapons on it. All those things move with the animations too.

Thanks
Amen
Valmond
Posts: 308
Joined: Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:26 pm

Post by Valmond »

That's a lot of questions which need quite much knowledge just to get the answers right...

But hey,

1,2,3) they show several heightmaps at once!
4) A combination of mixing textures (say trousers and a T-Shirt) on the bare "skin-texture" of the character,
attaching meshes either statically to a bone (like a helmet on the head-bone or a sword in the right-hand-bone)
or using a mesh skinned like the character and animating it with the same animation as the character uses (like a skirt).

There you go!
serengeor
Posts: 1712
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:34 pm
Location: Lithuania

Post by serengeor »

Well as far as I know they do use heightmaps.
I think one of the methods to see n=the next zone (tile) is to get player position on tile and if its near the end render the other ones.

0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 X 0 0 ----------------------x is the player
0 0 0 0 0 -----------------------0 is a tile
0 0 0 0 0

so if your character moves to

<-add some tiles here
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 X 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 <- erase these or do what ever you want to destroy them

as for clothes and weapons i think they just use different meshes and apply them to character (bones or idk where).

hope this is useful a little :roll:
Working on game: Marrbles (Currently stopped).
Frank Dodd
Posts: 208
Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:20 pm

Post by Frank Dodd »

I think serengeor has explained it well, i have a tiled terrain node in my Irrlicht wrapper that does this building tiles up in the distance that you cannot see and they pop into existence just before they become visible.

They can also be constructed a piece at a time so you don't have a stutter as a whole tile is built up in one go.

I caught a small bug in World of Warcraft sitting on a mountain in Icecrown admiring the view and in the distance as I turned I could see tiles being made visible in the distance. The tiles appeared to be relatively small, I would guess about the same size as the 'crossroads'.
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