Terrain

David · Post by **David** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:37 pm

Hi.
I have just started with irrlicht and have a couple of questions:
1.) I was thinking about having a terrain in my game, can I do that in the
bsp maps or do I HAVE TO make some kind of heightmap?
2.) How big can the bsp maps become?
3.) Can Irrlicht show 20 md3 models at the same time without it getting
laggy on an 800 mhz Geforce 2?
4.) Has anyone got the terrain "mod" to work on the new code?
5.) I know the basics of C++ but I don't know the first thing about locking matrices (DirectX)and so on, will I still be able to make for example a flag in the wind?

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 2:17 pm

1. You can use any mesh format for anything. BSP, MS3D... whatever.
2. Big as in "number of vertices" or "area of map"? I believe the area is as big as you want to go.
3. That's highly relative to the number of vertices in each mesh. I don't have a low end system like that to test it, but I have a application that does 50 sceneNodes (total of 5,000 vertices) at 600 fps on a 1.5 Ghz Geforce 5900 Ultra.
4. Niko implemented terrain as part of the engine in 0.4.2 if you can't get the mod to work.
5. I'm hoping that you just mean turning the flag to match the wind direction and not trying to render a completely physical fabric mesh. Irrlicht has simple absolute and relative set and get Rotation and Position functions.

SuryIIID · Post by **SuryIIID** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 3:19 pm

Hi , i' m also new to this engine and i found it extremely easy to use fast when it comes to loading a QIII map and running around but i have some questions for you (surprising heh

)

1.How to change the rendering order of the nodes , i only see a

Code: Select all

smgr->drawAll();

in the examples loop , but for some reason when i switch the 8.SpecialFX example to fullscreen the water is rendered after the fire cutting portions of it...

2.Quake 3 maps are cool but how about Half Life /CS .bsp maps , the i-net is full of them but can Irrlicht support them ?

3.I found the engine quite fast but when i tried the terrain demo (KnightToFlight) it runs on 13 FPS on my GF4MX , should i use my 3DS/MS3D mesh for simulate large outdoor terrains or should i just wait for the next version with the built in terrain node with LOD to be completed ?

4.I'm new to MSVC++ 6.0 and i have problems with it's "code completion" functions
so if for example i click on "List members" or "Parameter info" or "Complete word" from the contest menu for code line for example smgr->drawAll(); or core::vector3df nothing happens...how can i make the VC++ to list the members when i type smgr->

Ok that's enough questions for now..

Thanks in advance

keless · Post by **keless** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 4:23 pm

For the most part, I havent had any trouble with auto-completion with IrrLicht in MSVC.NET. To absolutely makes sure auto-completion works, just add all the .h files in the irrlicht/include directory to your project.

niko · Post by **niko** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 4:23 pm

SuryIIID wrote:but for some reason when i switch the 8.SpecialFX example to fullscreen the water is rendered after the fire cutting portions of it...

That's just a bug, it is fixed in version 0.4.2.

SuryIIID wrote: 2.Quake 3 maps are cool but how about Half Life /CS .bsp maps , the i-net is full of them but can Irrlicht support them ?

Sure, just write a loader for them, it's not difficult.

SuryIIID wrote: 3.I found the engine quite fast but when i tried the terrain demo (KnightToFlight) it runs on 13 FPS on my GF4MX , should i use my 3DS/MS3D mesh for simulate large outdoor terrains or should i just wait for the next version with the built in terrain node with LOD to be completed ?

Wait for the finished terrain renderer, it will be quite fast. Or ask knighttoflight about his renderer, he might know.

Speaking of the code compleation: There are some threads in this forum, discussing it. Maybe you'll find the answer there.

t · Post by t » Fri Dec 26, 2003 4:48 pm

if you're using visual assist, I found that adding the irrlicht folder to a setting in visual assist makes it work properly. I can't check which setting right now but you should be able to work it out

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 5:24 pm

To fix the Intellisense (otherwise know as auto complete)

Close all instances of VC.
Delete the NCB file (i. e. "projectname.NCB")
Start VC again.

SuryIIID · Post by **SuryIIID** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 5:48 pm

Thanks saigumi i already saw your previous posts about this subject and i tried it..but it didnt work...
I'm using VC++ 6.0 and i have all the headers in the "External dependencies" folder in the IDE's treeview , and i have the Irricht header and lib paths set.
BTW i'm having similar problems with the DX SDK samples..ie some objects
list their members some objects doesnt...
Maybe i should upgrade to VS.NET

Is VC++ .NET works under Win98 ?

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 8:49 pm

Yeah, it should work in 98.

The only other time that I have seen somethign bad like that is when I incorrectly make a call to some other included function in the same header file. From that point on, none of the Intellisense shows up for that library.

If you go to http://msdn.microsoft.com, there is a link to the V++ .Net newsgroup that should get you a good answer. It's where I got my Intellisense problem answered.

keless · Post by **keless** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 9:14 pm

it should also be noted that if you're trying to access variables in a classes function, but you havent yet written in "classname::" in the function header, it wont know what variable you're talking about and therefore wont auto-complete.

I do this on accident sometimes when creating new class functions-- copy over the function header from the definition and start coding before remembering to put that in. Often times you can use Intellisense to know when you're doing something wrong, like that.

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 10:43 pm

I've got the terrain renderer working, but I haven't watched the FPS.

The terrain renderer is not difficult to use. See changes.txt for instructions.

SuryIIID · Post by **SuryIIID** » Sat Dec 27, 2003 12:27 am

The terrain renderer is not difficult to use. See changes.txt for instructions

Yep i've wrote a basic DX LOD terrain using VB6 , but writting VC++ is diferent story..

http://free.bol.bg/suryiiid/Terrain_demo.zip

It ranges from 2 to 20 000 triangles pending of the LOD
and it's rendered pretty fast

btw the server is sloowww