"Make Room" button

[BenH_76]

After going through the first part of the FPS tutorial I notice how annoying it was to make a simple room. It would be so much easier if there was a "Make Room" button where the user would input the desired room dimensions and wall thickness and then the room would be created for them.

[shadmar]

Just make it once and save as prefab :-)

 

[BenH_76]

Just make it once and save as prefab :-)

 

Good workaround but my way would be easier. As of now the editor is way too clunky for me to use for any level creation. I will use Modo for all modeling. I am 1000 times faster in there.

[Pancakes]

How do you save as pre-fab :3

[Mumbles]

Good workaround but my way would be easier.

 

I don't know who's method is easier but I'd go with Shadmar's method... Your way of a make room button has everyone's rooms looking very similar, in the same style. When you build a prefab, all of your rooms look similar to each other, and all of my rooms look similar to each other - but your rooms are probably in a totally different style to mine.

 

Every game developer's rooms looking more-or-less the same gets really boring really quick. Games are where you can let your imagination run wild. If you're not going to have anything unique in your game, I'd join Activision...

 

The rooms in Metal Gear Solid didn't look anything like the rooms in Splinter Cell even though they were the same sort of game from the same sort of time.

[BenH_76]

I don't know who's method is easier but I'd go with Shadmar's method... Your way of a make room button has everyone's rooms looking very similar, in the same style. When you build a prefab, all of your rooms look similar to each other, and all of my rooms look similar to each other - but your rooms are probably in a totally different style to mine.

 

Every game developer's rooms looking more-or-less the same gets really boring really quick. Games are where you can let your imagination run wild. If you're not going to have anything unique in your game, I'd join Activision...

 

The rooms in Metal Gear Solid didn't look anything like the rooms in Splinter Cell even though they were the same sort of game from the same sort of time.

 

Well with my way everybody wins. I could use the "Make Room" button and you could use the prefab option.

[shadmar]

How do you save as pre-fab :3

 

Rightclick parent of objects you want to prefab in scene browser, can be anything.

http://www.leadwerks...de/prefabs-r681

 

 

Good workaround but my way would be easier. As of now the editor is way too clunky for me to use for any level creation. I will use Modo for all modeling. I am 1000 times faster in there.

 

You can't do lightmapping in the editor on those, and BSP wouldn't apply, the objects won't be reusable by the renderer, which will be slower to render.

http://www.leadwerks.com/files/csg.pdf

[Josh]

Do people seriously not understand how to drag the mouse and make a brush? You can just drag out the walls to sketch them out. It's way faster than any polygonal modeling application.

[Rick]

The one thing for the OP that I will say is that I remember in Hammer you could make a big cube, then there was a hallow option where you give the thickness of the walls, and it would basically make the "room" for you. It was pretty nice and allowed you to quickly block out rooms and tunnels.

[Josh]

Yes, the "hollow" operation is definitely useful, and will be added along with carving.

[cassius]

slice plane is also usefull, as in 3dws. You can use it to cut roof shapes and a lot of other stuff.

[BenH_76]

Do people seriously not understand how to drag the mouse and make a brush? You can just drag out the walls to sketch them out. It's way faster than any polygonal modeling application.

 

No it is not . In Modo I make a cube a flip the normals. Viola...instant room. Only in real life do walls need thickness.

[Rick]

Only in real life do walls need thickness

 

Wall thickness is completely based on the type of game you are making. Some games do need wall thickness.

[cassius]

I just checked the price of modo. No thanks not for me.

[BenH_76]

I just checked the price of modo. No thanks not for me.

 

Yeah it is pretty expensive. It is a great program though.

[Mumbles]

The one thing for the OP that I will say is that I remember in Hammer you could make a big cube, then there was a hallow option where you give the thickness of the walls, and it would basically make the "room" for you. It was pretty nice and allowed you to quickly block out rooms and tunnels.

 

I'm more familiar with WorldCraft, but it was the same thing. Very useful too for fast room building, and then you could "carve" a doorway. Carve just being their word for CSG subtraction. Very nice for LE 2 was that UU3D has an RMF importer, so those of us without LE 3 can still have fast, CSG built levels - except we use a third party program instead. (I don't believe there is a clause as part of WorldCraft's or Hammer's license that disallows such usage)

 

I must admit, when building a house (for example) I just created a huge big brush the size of the entire house, hollowed that and then added lots of thin horizontal brushes to separate each floor, and then thin vertical brushes to define each room within the floor. This way I didn't have to worry about "connecting" the rooms together, as I would have if I'd done each room as it's own hollowed brush.

 

I only hollowed the entire building as a shortcut - I could have done it with 6 large (but thin) brushes just as easily.

[cassius]

in 3dws getting a brick texture on an outside wall and wallpaper on the inside can be acheived by using slice plane to split the inside and outside wall and applying different textures to each side. Quicker than building a seperate wall.

[Josh]

Or just select the face you want and apply a material to that face.

[cassius]

Yeah. I forgot that.

[Pancakes]

Do people seriously not understand how to drag the mouse and make a brush? You can just drag out the walls to sketch them out. It's way faster than any polygonal modeling application.

 

not true josh, it's faster in Blender (or Modo) - CSG is slower and clumsier than polygons. the one advantage though is that CSG is built into the editor directly so overall it saves time in some cases because you don't have to switch back and forward between applications and that for very very simple structures it can be easier for UV mapping

 

but once you try to make anything semi complex CSG is outclassed in every way.

 

iIt may be annoying for you to hear, much in the same way that it's kind of how programmers try to tell me that "C++ is better than flowgraphs" except for the fact that learning to use the basic functions of a modeling program doesn't take more than a week and learning C++ can take years.

 

For example in 30 minutes, I could teach a total newbie how to make a complex staircase in blender, in a matter of 60 seconds. How long would it take to make a spiraling staircase in CSG? Now compare that to how long it would take you to teach me how to program a new shader or inventory system in C++ It would take longer than 30 minutes.

 

more like 30 days of intensive instruction

[Josh]

How long would it take to make a spiraling staircase in CSG?

About a minute. I made a tube and a cylinder, and then lengthened each segment of the tube to make stairs:

 

I understand you are more familiar with Blender, but you're really selling yourself short by refusing to learn new things.

[Pancakes]

that's real cute josh but you don't have the same control as with polygons where you coudl snake, twist, and turn every segment of that staircase with a click of the mouse, I know what I'm talking about here, and exactly what do you mean, refusing to learn new things, if someone would teach me C++ I would gladly learn it - fact is online resources for learning programming are really ****ty imo

 

Is that what you mean?

[Josh]

CSG is more for building out your level quickly, not for making lots of little details. Polygonal models are good for adding detailed props throughout the scene, but if you try to model every little detail in a scene it will take a really long time. The image below shows a scene's brush geometry, then the instanced props placed throughout the scene, and finally both together:

 

With this approach you can model a set of props and then use them again and again. It maximizes the amount of level geometry you can produce with the least amount of work. It also lets multiple people work together making game levels with the same set of props, even if some of them aren't modeling experts.

[Pancakes]

I understand what CSG is for and I personally find it useful and even fun. But I stand by what I said. You can sketch out the basic components of a scene in the same way, only faster and with more accuracy in polygons. And it doesn't take long to learn. That was clever use of CSG to build that staircase of yours. And that's what poly modeling is, clever use of different types of tools.

 

With staircases you take a single segment, perhaps an elongated cube. Parent it to a curve, duplicate it along an array. And then you simply drag the curve where you want it to be. It gives you total control over the shape of the staircase, it could be shaped like a Z, it could be shape like a U, it could go up and down like a roller coaster. And all you have to do is drag the points around with your mouse. Ultimately you'd be able to sketch out a staircase faster using this method.

 

As far as learning programming. Maybe that could be a side business for you to teach programming for game development. I always liked your tutorials. I'd be willing to pay $300 - $500 a year if the instruction was good enough. I don't think you know what it's like, when you ask for help while trying to learn online you will get ignored 90% of the time and when people do answer you they glaze over the most important parts without fail!! It just puts me in the mood to smack people around.

[Road Kill Kenny]

if someone would teach me C++ I would gladly learn it - fact is online resources for learning programming are really ****ty imo

 

This is the biggest load of bull**** excuse I've ever heard... There are so many good learning resources for programming out there, especially for C++. I'd suggest if you can't manage with what is out there then perhaps you should reconsider doing game development. Stop blaming others for your inexperience and resistant learning. Not everything in life is served on a silver platter.