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I'm trying to make bsps from scratch! I do not own any games like quake or halflife, but i do own 3ds max 5, and dark basic pro! Isn't there a way to convert x or 3ds to bsp? Are there any bsp editors that don't nned a game to power. I don't want to use another game's tools for making my own game. but I need something to convert my worlds to bsp, any ideas?

Wayne

A BSP is a simple greyscale image... Just as the DBPro handbook says it is x-d

Basically, you could just use Paint to make a BSP...

Just create something like a relief map of the landscape you want. In greyscale, the areas that are pure white will be the highest point possible, and the areas that are pure black will be at the "ground" on the matrix.

Having yet to actually test how this works, I must ask...

When creating a greyscale, will the white simply go to the Height parameter in your matrix (basically automatically hitting the ceiling of the matrix), or is the height in the BSP calculated according to RGB data?

By calculating it according to RGB data, I mean that the higher the sum of the RGB values (closer toward white), the higher the point is rendered. Of course, this is the way it's probably done either way, but the difference being whether there is a formula for a specific height by RGB value, or whether it is calculated as a percent of the Height parameter.

To even more specifically answer your question, DBPro does include all the 2D commands needed to create your own greyscale in pure code, or even remake Paint into something more friendly toward this purpose. If you really study the DBPro syntax (vocabulary of commands) and semmantics (grammar of commands), you'll see that an application could even be created that would show you the relief map in 3D by rendering it on the fly, as you work on the greyscale.

Keep in mind there are about a thousand ways to do anything. At the moment, the only 3rd party tool you really need is something to render your .x models. Though I am sure there is a way to do that in DBPro, vector editing would still require that a few commands be added to the language via DLL.

Hope I helped some, since I tend to ramble 8)

I think you have BSP and TERRAIN confused Galiem. What you describe is a TERRAIN (basically a MATRIX object that gets it height set according to a reference bitmap image). Rather than coding a bunch of commands to alter the height of a MATRIX, it uses the pixel value of each point in the reference image to set the height of the matrix at the corresponding X,Y location in the image.

BSP is an algorithm and format for a scene that is organized in such a way that it might be rendered efficiently (using the BSP algorithm). The WORLD commands in DBPro let you take advantage of the BSP format, implementing the BSP algorithm behind the scenes for so that you don't have to. Another benefit of using BSP scenes is that DBPro can automatically hand collisions with the world itself, leaving you to avoid that part of the coding. Additionally, there are some multi-texturing and/or light-mapping features that you can get by using a good BSP modeller to create these features. Unfortunately, I don't know much about the workings of light-mapping other than in a general sense. There's a lot of information on the 'net about BSP format, BSP algorithms, and the way games and tools use the format. I assume that the BSP support in DBPro is designed to work much like it does in commercial games...

EnchantisoftStudios: I'm sure there are tools out there that do what you want... for example, Cartography Shop can create BSP worlds for use with DBPro - although, it seems to be in a flux with the author working on v2 and telling users that "it'll all work perfectly in v2". As far as converting .3DS or .X files to BSP format, I'm not sure if that exists or not. Someone else on these forums should be able to tell you tho'. I did read (on the CS forum) that if you can't use .X to store information about light-maps.

Thanks Ed, and Gal.....sorry you had your wires crossed.

DarkBASIS Pro says it comes with a bsp compiler...what is it? WHERE IS IT?

its part of the tools packaged... how i'd suggest you left it be as it is far from reliable
what i'd do is, get gmax (tempest gamepack too) - import your 3DS into that and then rigg as a BSP then compile it using that
you will need a 3rd party compiler like QeRadient or something... but it will compile fine and you can use it fine.

QeRadient doesn't compile... it's just an editor. Actually I'm prolly wrong, I don't know much about Quake editing, only HL.

But seriously, I gave up after multiple attempts a compiling a simple box failed.

Sorry for confusion...

I'll be looking at BSP soon for the program I am writing. I'll post something then if the thread is still alive, or there's a copycat thread. I got a log ways to go before then, though.