Re: [tuxracer-devel] Creating new levels (was: (no subject))

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Jasmin Patry wrote:

> Yes, the issues are coming back to me now.  It would be nice to strike
> a compromise between the easy visual placement of a bitmap and the extra
> control of a text file.  Allowing the user to specify the object's (x,z)
> coordinates in image space would help.  We'd need some easy way get the
> image coordinates of a point in the heightmap image -- the Gimp ruler is
> just lousy for this (at least in 1.0), and I don't know of any feature
> that displays the image coordinates of the current mouse position.

Well, GIMP 1.1.7 (which shipped with SuSE 6.2 - so it's been around for
a while) displays the mouse coordinates in the bottom-left corner of the
window all the time - so I guess that problem is dealt with.

> In any case, I doubt an extra text file is necessary -- this could all
> be done by adding an extra Tcl callback and the object
> positions/orientations could be specified via the course.tcl file.

Yep - I guess so.
 
> It would provide even extra flexibility if portions of the scene graph
> could be constructed in the course.tcl file.  (I already have a basic
> scene graph in tuxracer -- that's how Tux himself is constructed, and
> it's all done in Tcl in tux.tcl).  Animation nodes could be added to
> make some of the models move, and scripted callbacks could control be
> used to control the behaviour when a player is near or collides with the
> model, etc.

Well, if you are going to go that far, take your existing code from
within the game that converts the image maps into triangles - and
turn that into an offline tool.  Have that tool export the triangles
into a 3D model file.  Now import that file into a modeller and you
can add other 3D models interactively - build courses that don't
require a regularly gridded terrain - make tunnels and bridges, etc, etc.

If your modeller can export animation nodes, etc (which PrettyPoly
does...although it's not yet usable as a modeller) - then that's
all you need.

Of course then you have a game like mine...which I guess doesn't come
as much of a suprise!

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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