Duck and Cover

I'm working on a multi-level map... I'm using vast areas of black tiles to block out the lower levels otherwise It looks kinda complicated with all the levels below showing up as well, and for hiding some areas from view...

I have a question re: the black tiles... do they use up a lot of CPU time, rendering time, etc? Its just blackness but I'm not sure how the FOT engine handles it...

For instance... would an area with maybe 500 black tiles stacked upon each other, take a lot longer to render than a empty background that is also black? Or would the engine render it really fast, since its all black...

Also... does the engine like to render things that are hidden from view, like the 2 or 3 other stacks of tiles that are hidden underneath the floor, or does it know that the tiles are hidden from view, and doesn't process them?

Thanks in advance

subnormal wrote:Also... does the engine like to render things that are hidden from view, like the 2 or 3 other stacks of tiles that are hidden underneath the floor, or does it know that the tiles are hidden from view, and doesn't process them?

That one I know. As long as you do UTU and NOD (in that order) before you try and render the minimap image, all "under the roof" and underground tiles should be "thrown out" of the render, but to be on the safe side, personally, I don't put any tiles underground or under roofs just in case. Also, make sure you have open a "tiles only" version of you map -- the engine just loves to render entities.

Thats the renderer for the create picture option in the editor then ... But what about the game engine itself...?

are you wondering if it slows down the game? if that's it, then i'd think no... not that much. there are a lot of maps far more complicated in the game then anything i've seen a mapper make...

In my experience black tiles won't slow the game down when you're playing. However, having sheets of black tiles will slow the editor down as it always does when working w/multi-level maps.

For this reason I suggest that you:

• Don't put in the black tiles until you're about to finish the maps. The trick here is to remember to leave room for them.
• Remember that you can right-click on elevation levels on the elevation bar to hide them. This is a very nifty feature when working w/multi-level maps.

War Bringer wrote:there are a lot of maps far more complicated in the game then anything i've seen a mapper make...

That's because you haven't seen any of my maps, War Bringer... :lol:

OTB

Ok..

Complicated is good I think...

I like heaps of detailed stuff to explore in a map...

Theres about 7 levels I want to put in.. you start on level 7 and go through a small carpark, into level 6, then down to 5, 4... then theres an elevator thats going to teleport whoevers in it over to another area which holds 3-1... all covered by black tiles so you can only see the level you are on..


Yeah I'm using the right click to hide levels feature... if that feature wasn't there.. then by hell I wouldn't be able to do maps like this

using the black tiles in the editor isnt much of a problem for slow-downs though due to the right click feature I reckon.


Oh yeah.. that brings up one thing...
In this map, the entrance is in the side of a cliff face... there are two (entrances).. ones the blocked off carpark entrance which is filled with rocks and overturned cars, and the other is the personnel side entrance... through a reinforced concrete wall and some doors.. but I dont want to leave it like that... the place is supposed to be empty and inaccessable. So I want to make it so you have to find a way into it that nobody else was able to find...
Like planting some dynamite and blowing away a wall? I'm not too familiar with the editor so I'm not sure of the capabilities of it.... Does anyone wanna help me out with some ideas?

Hey everyone, I'm back from vacation!

Subnormal, a way I've found which is something you may want to implement is by creating a new scenery sprite. It can be a boulder, a billboard, or anything big. Place it in front of the cave entrance and give it a new player index. Place a waypoint a few feet away. Now you will use a trigger to move it to the waypoint when something happens. Either use a switch far away in a building or trigger it with some quest. Maybe you meet someone who tells you about the secret entrance and after the "speech has occured" then the object moves.

Another thing I've found that relates to your original problem is the way the game engine handles roof popping for underground areas. When you create a city with streets and blocks, the city blocks are one level higher than the streets. In essence they are like islands. If you have a staircase going underground in one of the blocks only the ground in that one block will pop. Of course that is only if the underground area is confined to the size of the area of the city block.

One last trick is to place the underground areas far from each other. So when the player scrolls around he would be unlikely to find the other underground area.

Hmmm......

I've found that happens sometimes... When I don't want it to do that, I do one of two things... I link the "islands" by those purple tiles that I make invisible and etherial... so when one island pops, they all do....

In the map I'm making right now, theres a cliff face which is 'outside'... the top of the cliff has nothing on it, just a floor of black tiles going off.. so when the user tries to scroll around to see what else is around (while underground) all he sees is blackness because the game appears to reset all popping when the selected unit is not on the screen, so all anybody who tries to look around will see is that floor of black tiles.

Also, little 'secret' areas that I'd like hidden, I cover with some black tiles that won't pop until you get in or very near to the entrance ...

subnormal wrote:Theres about 7 levels I want to put in.. you start on level 7 and go through a small carpark, into level 6, then down to 5, 4... then theres an elevator thats going to teleport whoevers in it over to another area which holds 3-1... all covered by black tiles so you can only see the level you are on..

One word of warning that I will give you about going too "hog wild" w/multi-level maps is that they can get rather tricky in the heat o' battle. Too many overlapping areas leaves a player vulnerable to accidentally clicking on something on another level and...well, I've reloaded more than a few times thanks to mishaps like that.

Other than that, I salute your ambition!

subnormal wrote:Yeah I'm using the right click to hide levels feature... if that feature wasn't there.. then by hell I wouldn't be able to do maps like this

I know what you mean. I built a couple of multi-level maps w/o knowning about it and I was seriously skimping on details because I was essentially limited to displaying only a single level's tiles. I went back and fleshed them out once Red! gave us the scoop on right-clicking.

subnormal wrote:using the black tiles in the editor isnt much of a problem for slow-downs though due to the right click feature I reckon.

That and the CPU isn't as taxed w/lots of identical tiles since it doesn't have to load up seven billion files, only one.

subnormal wrote:...I want to make it so you have to find a way into it that nobody else was able to find... Like planting some dynamite and blowing away a wall? I'm not too familiar with the editor so I'm not sure of the capabilities of it.... Does anyone wanna help me out with some ideas?

Destroyable terrain isn't an option, unless you know someone w/some serious 3D mods skills and the ability to create FoT sprites from scratch. I'm going to operate under the rather crass assumption that you don't. ;)

Here are some options:

• Use barricades to block the entrace. Modify the barricade entities so that they have insanely high resistances to everything but Explosion-type damage. These will then be able to block the entrance w/o leaving them vulnerable to rifle fire. (You know, like in the core campaign. Egads was that cheesy...) If you have dl'd my demo feel free to use the barricade entities that are included w/it. They are designed exactly like that.
• Create a door entity that is destroyable, or modify an existing one so that it is. This is accomplished by checking/ticking the field "destroyable" (or something similar to that) in the entity editor. Use Domin's "Spray" or Red's "RedViewer" program to determine which sprites have a destroyed aspect in their sprite. (Unless someone still has that list that I posted back on the old DaC...)

Those are two viable options that don't require any sort of hocus pocus or scripting voodoo to implement. I hope one of them is to your satisfaction.

subnormal wrote:Also, little 'secret' areas that I'd like hidden, I cover with some black tiles that won't pop until you get in or very near to the entrance ...

Yes, that's essentially what they did w/the Shi Palace in San Fran (FO2). I was thinking that this is what they were designed for, although they were used as floor tiles in the "Pitch Black" SRE, also.

Jimmyjay86 wrote:Hey everyone, I'm back from vacation!

'Bout time, ya slacker! ;)

Cheers,

OTB

Off the top of my head it's the two generic wood doors and the generic flyscreen door. I've tried adding the destroyed frames to the jail door but it comes out complete garbage, it's a pity they didn't make more destroyable doors. Can think of several story's where they'd be essential.

Is it easy to convert those tile graphics into sprite graphics?

For instance... there are several walls in the game that have a 'destroyed' look... If it was easy to extract the graphics and make them into a scenery sprite, why couldnt somebody take two sets... one of the original undamaged wall and then add another set of the damaged set of the wall...

It'd look cool if you could blow away a wall!

I'm thinking the industrial walls, set 3... The flat concrete walls.

Also, I've been looking but I can't find any skeleton graphics... I want some lying around to represent people that couldn't get out. Am I going to have to make my own? (standalone skeletons that is), the dead sprites all look too 'fresh' for my liking.

I extracted and put together some graphics... and modified one of the barricade sprites....

The death animation is pretty long, and as I don't really want to create all the frames needed to show the wall disingrating, I just popped in the end frame only... I'll fix it later.

It appears to work, but for some clipping problems... I don't know how to set the bounding box, and the ground likes to take over the sprite... Have a look at the picture here

www.geocities.com/subnormalx/Crappy.jpg
(I'm not sure how to display images so I'll just link to it)

Can anybody tell me how you're supposed to stop this crap happening?

Try the steps from this tutorial. It was written for an older version of the Redviewer but it is still applicable.

Scenery Sprites Tutorial

Your pictures don't look too bad. You may want to add some debris to the final sprite on the ground.

subnormal wrote:Also, I've been looking but I can't find any skeleton graphics... I want some lying around to represent people that couldn't get out. Am I going to have to make my own? (standalone skeletons that is), the dead sprites all look too 'fresh' for my liking.

There are a couple of skeleton tiles in the game. You'll find some in the generic floors "Sand" set. With a little bit of creativity you can blend the sand into whatever other surface you're using.

Then there's some more under Wasteland Objects/Jail Cell/Bloody Room. (It took me ages to find those. :lol: ) However, IIRC those are mostly skeletons on hooks, etc., more suited to a torture chamber.

Sorry I can't help you more w/graphics. As you can see there are other gurus in that department.

Cheers,

OTB

Thanks for the tutorial, jimmy, it Helped heaps.. !

I've got the first (non-destroyed wall) frame aligning perfectly and with all the graphics behaving properly... but the last frame (the destroyed wall) is messed up, with the wall behind it showing through....
Aaargh!

Both frames have the same bounding box, etc both have the same dimensions for the graphics aswell .. I don't know what gives. :(


And re: the skeleton graphics... I guess I'll just go find some suitable tiny little dead skeleton picture and import it .. maybe I'll check out www.rotten.com.. hmmmmm

subnormal wrote:And re: the skeleton graphics... I guess I'll just go find some suitable tiny little dead skeleton picture and import it .. maybe I'll check out www.rotten.com.. hmmmmm

Or -- if you're also into FO/FO2 modding -- you can see about getting a hold of the skeletons from those games. They were used as containers and may at least serve as a basis for a FoT skeleton tile/sprite. (That is, if the difference in POV isn't enough to make it look like total and complete shite...)

Alternately you might want to talk to some of the FO/FO2 modders and they may be able to help you out.

OTB

I took a look at your wall and played around with it a little. I couldn't get the explosion to show up but I did fix the bounding boxes for them. I'll try it some more to see if I can get it working. The walls actually turn out good without the problems in the crappy.jpg picture. Give me your email and I'll send it back to you.

Haha, wtf did you get that pic in your sig JJ?

Ok yeah thanks mate...

Don't worry about the explosions, I've set up remote traps to be placed in front of the walls, so they'll do the exploding look...

My e-mail is subnormalx@yahoo,co.uk

Thanks a heap

Red wrote:Haha, wtf did you get that pic in your sig JJ?

I got it as a pop-up on some russian site so I had to save the banner. I'm not quite sure what it says but you know, the Fallout Fantasy thing is funny.