ChangeLevel & Alternative way to do terrain

Spyrewolf · Post by **Spyrewolf** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:38 pm

Static mesh works fine, I use it, however the lighting is not functioning and every thing ends up one shade, (no shadows).
I use the static mesh for collision,(not rendered) and the static entity for lighting, works fine this way round

I agree that jay was correct you must have made a typo or it;s something else producing the crash.

Jaguar_jwg · Post by **Jaguar_jwg** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 6:26 am

OK. I'll give it another try.

Jaguar_jwg · Post by **Jaguar_jwg** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 1:15 am

I got it! My terrain actor is now a StaticMesh, and I don’t even need a map file. The StaticMesh does both the rendering and collisions. So my character can walk up hills, and to my delight, not mountains. The ColCheckLevel in the StaticMesh is super (I am really getting to like RF more and more). When it’s set to 1, the bounding box surrounds the mesh as a rectangle. When set to 2, the bounding box takes the exact form (almost) of the mesh.
I created a box with the top opened, and used it as a StaticMesh. When I set ColCheckLevel to 2, my player cannot get into or out of the box unless he jumps through the opening. Cool.
Something I noted though. I tested a low poly terrain, and my character was able to walk up mountains. So in order for the collisions to work properly the triangles need to be close, or (for low poly) the mountains must be made separate from the lowlands, but with slopes too steep for the player to climb. This is great stuff.
Thanks for your help.

incenseman2003 · Post by **incenseman2003** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:19 am

What about being able to shoot through static mesh tarrain? If there is an actor on the other side of a wall you can kill it by just shooting through the wall.

How is that remedied?

Spyrewolf · Post by **Spyrewolf** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 2:54 am

Really?

huh, didn't realize that was a bug this is gonna make things interesting? gonna check it out and see what happens

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:46 am

How is that remedied?

You have invisible brushes the same shape as the
terrain.

incenseman2003 · Post by **incenseman2003** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:45 pm

If you use invisible brushes the same shape as the tarrain then there will be twice as many polys or more on the screen at a time. You might as well just use the brushes to make the tarrain, but then that doesn't look that great. In short, you need a very powerfull PC to run the game and get any kind of good frame rate if you use tarrain.

Wouldn't it be better to be able to set the collision on the tarrain to what you need it to be?

Thats not an option though as RF doesn't allow that.

So we just have to sacrifice frame rate in a major way if we want tarrain and hope the game is playable.

We will just have to do the best we can I suppose. I hope there is a middle line somehwere.

Post by **Jay** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:37 pm

incenseman2003 wrote:If you use invisible brushes the same shape as the tarrain then there will be twice as many polys or more on the screen at a time. You might as well just use the brushes to make the tarrain, but then that doesn't look that great. In short, you need a very powerfull PC to run the game and get any kind of good frame rate if you use tarrain.

sorry but this is just wrong. Invisible brushes can be made in two ways:

Brushes with the 'sky' attribute on all faces. For those you are actually right, but you can also make the brushes 'Clip' brushes. Clip Brushes do NOT create any visible geometry (a.k.a. polys) during compilation, while they DO provide the needed collision detection. There is no framrate drawback, they are even faster than the staticmesh collision detection...

incenseman2003 · Post by **incenseman2003** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:52 pm

Details about certain things are not in the manual or the easy to find on the forums. Of course it would be easier if people were just born with everything they needed to know tucked away in thier minds. Because we aren't born knowing everything we need to know and the info can be elusive. We are left to find the answers on our own. Some people find more and some people find less. The answers that I gave were based on my experimentation. Of course it was wrong. I could only experiment so far. I am but a man and have other things to do in life and it takes me a little longer than some because of limitations imposed on me by mother nature. So I have to budget my time to allow for enough to do things.

Thanks for the details Jay. You have saved me allot of time.