Re: [Adonthell-devel] More map view ideas, something definite finally?

[Kai Sterker]

Am 16.04.2008 um 19:49 schrieb James Nash:

> However, something occurred to me while reading these mails:
>
> Will we run into problems if we have very high or low locations  
> (e.g. mountain locations)? If we imagine Waste's Edge to be more or  
> less ground level, then map objects in Uzdun Kal might have massive  
> z-offsets. Apart from making rendering harder this would probably  
> be hard to represent in a map editor GUI too.

I hadn't thought of it in terms of the editor yet, but shortly after  
sending the last mail, I figured there could be issues with that.

For example, if the map view wants to center on the player, it needs  
to have a z offset too. This adds more complexity to keeping it  
centered also. For example, we wouldn't (probably) want the map view  
to follow the player when jumping. I guess it would look odd if the  
character seems to stand still while the landscape moves around him.  
On reaching firm ground (like when jumping up to a higher level), the  
map view should then center on that new ground level again. And it  
should do so smoothly, especially when falling longer distances. I  
think that can be made to work, though :-). We already know the  
height of the ground below the character (for drawing the shadow), so  
we only need to implement the smooth transition to the new ground  
level. If that transition speed would coincide with the speed of a  
character falling, it should be fairly pleasant to the eye.

Another issue is that the map grid needs to be large enough to keep  
references to those objects, which might end up outside the actual  
area of the map after the projection. At first I thought they can be  
simply discarded, as they are outside the view, but this is only true  
as long as the view would stay at ground level zero. But it won't.


> I'm not sure how the map format works at the moment, but I assume  
> we won't have a single massive file representing the whole  
> (outside) world. Assuming things get split into smaller maps, I  
> suppose objects will only need z-offset relative to the map their  
> on, which shouldn't get too big. However it would be nice if the  
> player can walk seamlessly from one map to another and if that's  
> possible you'd need a way to describe one map's z-offset relative  
> to another map.

The final map format needs to be determined yet. So far it would be  
one big file, but as the area that is covered grows, we might have to  
change that.

Again, it looks like it would make sense to chop the map into smaller  
parts for the rendering. These could have a base z offset and all the  
actual objects would be placed relative to that. I hope that comes  
close to what you suggested.

I like that idea, since it means the "overflow" (i.e those objects  
ending up outside the map area after the projection to the base z  
offset) would be much smaller.


I still think I'll start simple with our single map area. But I'll  
add in a base offset (of zero) as that appears to be the thing to do.  
And I'm glad I haven't committed my map view implementation yet.  
Seems like it needs a bit of a rewrite too :-).

Kai