Re: [TuxKart-devel] track building
Status: Alpha
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From: Matze B. <ma...@br...> - 2004-09-29 00:35:31
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On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Joel Davis wrote: > Hello.. I saw the gotm mention of tuxkart (a little > late, I guess) and wanted to try and contribute. I'm a > programmer but I want to get a little more practice > doing level design and level building so I was > thinking of trying to build a "halloween" themed track > (before halloween). > > I had some questions, first a political one: Is there > any objections to using non-free software to create > content as long as the content is given to the tuxkart > project? There aren't any legal issues, but people > might have concerns about the open-source purity of > the project, and I'd respect that. All of the links > and tutorials mention only open source tools. (I'll > contibute any exporters I write in the process). If > people have a problem with the use of proprietary > tools, I'll find another way to contribute. > You can use non-free tools too. In fact all old tuxkart tracks have been created with ac3d which is no free app. Although there are some good reasons why we prefer free tools: - Ideological: After all we're writing free software and wanna push usage of free software - Practical: If others want to change/improve/work on your models they are forced to buy a commercial app. Often this makes it impossible for people to contribute. > Next, some technical questions: > - How does the engine handle visibility? Should I > break the track into chunks that the engine can cull, > or will it do that when it loads? How big should each > chunk be for the engine to be happy? Yes we need chunks, I'm not really sure what chunk size is optimal. > - instancing? See file format docu at homepage > - does the ac3d format support per-vertex color (aka > prelight?) I think yes, eventually consult google or the source code of the ac3d loader in plib. > - texture budget? And is the 256 res. limit still in > effect now that no one uses voodoo cards? I think textures can be any color depth and png now. > - how does the engine decide what to use for > collision? can we mark geometry to not-collide? what > about collision-only geometry? should I just use > regular geometry with a 100% transparent map? You can set flags on a per-texture basis. (Though there isn't even a NoCollision flag yet I think but it should be easy to add). > > I'm sure I'll have more questions once I start > modeling, and I can always dig through the code to > answer them, but I thought I'd ask the experts, and > introduce myself. Welcome Joe Greetings, Matze |