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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Best terrain plugin or extension for Dark Basic Pro and Dark GDK ?

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Juggernaut
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Posted: 21st Jan 2013 23:11
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Hello,

What is the best terrain plugin or extension for Dark Basic Pro and Dark GDk ?

After scouring through the internet I have come across the following extensions regarding terrain -

1. Advanced Terrain Extension - which seems to be part of the default Dark Basic Pro installation. Is this available in Dark GDK too ? Does it have any limitation on terrain size ?

2. Advanced Terrain Plus Extension - though I found this mentioned in one of TGCs newsletter I am yet to find the location from where it is available. Is this available for Dark GDK too ?

3. Blitzwerks terrain extension - Can any body tell me how good it work over the Advanced terrain ? I tried to run the demo but unfortunately it did not run at all on my Windows 7 x64. What is the largest terrain size that I can render with it ?

Now on the editor choice - which one do you people suggest that works best with Dark Basic pro.

Lastly is there any extension or plugin that can give me paged terrain system - resulting in an infinite world within the game level.
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MrValentine
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Posted: 22nd Jan 2013 09:32
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My head hurts...

Have you looked at 3DWS?

Anyway I think the most viable option at present is BTerrain as the developer is working on version 3, which MAY include Spherical Terrains, meaning planets... go over to the forum thread to push for that feature!

I plan to get BT eventually myself... but for now I am stuck using 3DWS...

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Adrian
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Posted: 22nd Jan 2013 11:54
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I have used Advanced Terrain and Blitzwerks Terrain (blitz) and I can say that Blitz is quite a bit faster than Advanced.

I've used both, both are easy to use, Blitz is faster but you have to pay for the full version. Try the free version and see how it compares.
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Juggernaut
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Posted: 22nd Jan 2013 17:07
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@Adrian: What is the largest terrain size that blitz terrain can handle without performance issues ?
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Adrian
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Posted: 22nd Jan 2013 21:33 Edited at: 22nd Jan 2013 21:40
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I believe it's 2048 * 2048

There is a demo on this forum here:

[href]forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=181322&b=1[/href]

BT uses LOD so when part of the terrain is a user-determined distance away, it is replaced by lower polygon models which reduces the amount of work the program has to do to keep things speedy.

Here's a video of something I'm working on at the moment. This uses the terrain in a real game situation and shows how smooth everything can run. (It actually runs smoother than it looks on this video.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kpkm-WOCVg
I have since done more work to this and have reduced the poly count further still but you'll get the idea.

This is a map 256*256. (There are 1500 trees on this island and it still looks very empty.)

One other thing: BT produces a landscape that can be effected by lights and can be painted or have the height changed in real time. Advanced Terrain can not.

There is a free version of Blitzwerks Terrain on this forum somewhere. Have a quick search for it.
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Juggernaut
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Posted: 22nd Jan 2013 22:57 Edited at: 22nd Jan 2013 23:24
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Quote: "BT uses LOD so when part of the terrain is a user-determined distance away, it is replaced by lower polygon models which reduces the amount of work the program has to do to keep things speedy."


Do I have to create the low poly version myself or does BlitzTerrain generates the low poly version of the terrain area automatically at run-time ?

Do collision detection, shader effects and dark physics work on BlitZ Terrain landscape ?

Is Blitz Terrain compatible with Dark Occlusion ?

Just checked out your video ? It looks brilliant !

Is those water planes and buoyency effects part of the Blitz Terrain feature set ? And the splinters that erupts and the water splashes - are they part of the BlitZ Terrain feature set too ? Or do I have to implement them on my own ?

Quote: "
There is a demo on this forum here:

forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=181322&b=1
"


That demo is giving me error at start up and is failing to run at all !

The error shown is - "Parameter is incorrect!"
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Adrian
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Posted: 22nd Jan 2013 23:42 Edited at: 22nd Jan 2013 23:45
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BT will do the low poly stuff itself so no worries there. You just need to set the distance. It's a good idea to have at least 1 level even if it's out of sight as it still reduces the poly count automatically.

I use BT's GetTerrainHeight (or something like that) for ground collisions.
You can set up DBPro objects from BT and use them for collision detection too. I think you could use Sparky's Collision plug-in with it but I haven't tried that yet. I've a bit more work to do on it before I know for sure.

BT terrains are treated as normal dbp objects so they probably would take shader effects but I haven't done much work with shaders so not sure, but I think so.

I don't have the physics or occlusion plug-ins so can't comment on them.

The water planes and effects would have to be coded by you.
The water plane uses Evolved's Water Shader - quite famous on these boards - search for it, it's really rather good.

It's just the terrain that's being done by BT.

One other great think about BT is that it can render to multiple cameras without having to redraw all the terrain if the cameras are close together. This makes side-by-side 3D stuff real easy. See this vid for an example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmdXvGMRCg&feature=youtu.be

The parameter is incorrect error is caused by Win7 SP1 I believe and means that the code has to be compiled from within DarkBasic Pro to run.
You may need to install the free version to fix it.
I think there might be a demo of it on YouTube somewhere.
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Juggernaut
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2013 00:51 Edited at: 23rd Jan 2013 00:54
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@Adrian: How much is a 2048 X 2048 terrain in real life KMs or Miles ?

Can I assign shader effects to BlitzWerks terrain ?

Is there any polygon count limit that I must adhere to ?

Does it support color heightmap ?

Does it support texture splatting in real time through code ?
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Adrian
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2013 09:58
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Quote: "How much is a 2048 X 2048 terrain in real life KMs or Miles ?"


It can be as far as you like. You scale it to the size it needs to be. You can make it 10 times bigger or 100 times bigger just by adjusting the scale factor.

Quote: "Can I assign shader effects to BlitzWerks terrain ?"

I don't know, I haven't done much with shaders, sorry.

Quote: "Is there any polygon count limit that I must adhere to ?"

Not that I am aware of.

Quote: "Does it support color heightmap ?"

It does support colour height maps. The green and red channels are used to give a step value somewhere in the region of 65000 separate height values.

Quote: "Does it support texture splatting in real time through code ? "

Yes, you can see this effect on the second video above.
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Adrian
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2013 10:04
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Here's a re-compiled version of the huge terrain example that you couldn't run earlier. I'm hoping that you will be able to run this version. Just overwrite the old .exe with this one.
It's only 4.55 mb
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Juggernaut
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2013 10:31
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Thank you Adrian for doing this to me.
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Juggernaut
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2013 10:39
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I see it now ! It is beautiful !

What tool has been used to create the stepped erosion effect do you know ?
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Adrian
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Posted: 23rd Jan 2013 15:52
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I have no idea I'm afraid.
Try Google for "height map generator" or something like that.

Quote: "Thank you Adrian for doing this to me. "

You are welcome
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