Sorry your browser is not supported!

Just need some opinions. I am creating a small city landscape for a game for my grandson. What is better. Use terrain commands and create a flat surface with a texture that maps the roads, or create a directx model that is flat and has the roads on it? OR, any other ways. I eventually will put in buildings, and stuff.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=179242&b=3

This might help you along, sure amazed this guy when he worked it out.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Sorry for using this thread for something else, but this is important and I need an answer a.s.a.p, lol sorry

Anyways, which Game creator should I use to create a social networking game, such as Second life, or Playstation Home, those kind of games. I am leaning toward Leadwerks Engine but I'm not sure if I can make it into a social network site. Does anyonw know which would be best and why?

Central_Plaza, don't spam other peoples threads.

I've actually been working on this a bit. I've attached a sample program and "city scape". Its not complete, just streets and sidewalks, a few placeholder objects.
Here is my method, so far.
First, I take a screenshot of a real city, this case, my home town, Scotia, NY., in Google Earth. I load it in Photoshop, and add a layer. I use the pen tool to make paths that follow the streets, then stoke the paths with a brush. Different brush sizes to mathch the width of the streets.
Then I load the images as rotoscopes in Animation Master. I like A:M for this because its easy, and fairly quick. I'm sure if you have Max, or Maya, or even Blender, a similar method could be used.
In A:M, I place splines on all the roads, but I do not connect them at the intersections. After I have all the streets laid out as splines, I use the Sweeper tool to sweep the roads on the splines.
Then, I just go back and manually connect all the intersections.
For the curbs, I make new splines, which just follow the interior spaces between the streets (the blocks). Then I sweep those with a curb profile.
I then export to Ultimate Unwrap, and unwrap the UV's and texture.
I also break the model up into groups, because one big model runs slower than a broken up one.
The DBPro app splits the groups up into seperate models, and loads them. I'm fiddling with exclude object, hide/show, etc, but, not much gain yet. Not enough models, probably. Once there are more buildings, street lights, signs, etc, then it will probably be necessary.
I'm working on another scape right now, I have filled in the terrain sections as well. This area will be Lake Isabella.CA.
All in all, I can model the streets and curbs and terrains, and texture in about 8 hours using this method.
I'll probably get faster at it as I do more of them.

Thank you that has helped me out alot as well. Now im having trouble doing the UV's =(

If you have Ultimate Unwrap, you can first do a planar map on the whole thing. Then, select the streets, hide the curbs. Use "Orient Islands" and select "horizontal. Then, use "Pack UVs" (area packing,island,packed), then "Align Islands" Left, then "Align Islands", top. This will stack all the faces up without messing with scale. You may have to rotate a few faces around, but if you put a checker bitmap as diffuse, you will see the odd ones in the 3d window. You can select the faces in the 3d window and turn them in the 2d window as necessary. Repeat the process for the curbs. Then scale them to get the repeating textures.
Its not perfect, but, its fairly quick. Experiment around with all the alignment and packing tools in UU.

I read the other thread pretaining to how you were using unity to create your maps. The project im working on now wont have large maps (fighter) but another project thats been swimming around in my head might. Maybe not cities but small villages. Very interesting method. Sounds like it could come in handy in the future! Thanks for sharing the info.