Landscapes are mostly made of . . err . . well . . ground. But ground can only stay at the same width or get narrower with altitude. You can't have a mountain with holes in it, or negative slopes. I found this a bit limited and started building landscapes with models. Obviously it doesn't make sense to define those objects as models, since they'd be gone when hit. The only way to make them stay, is to define them as targets and give them enough life to survive a round. A few other tags are needed, so they don't get destroyed when driven over, drop, etc. pp.
(A bridge that evaporates when being used, doesn't make much sense)
A new object type for structures would make things easier.
(Since they don't use any accessories, this should be a snap.)
The other trouble is, that we only have bounding boxes or spheres. If a model is much narrower at the top or base, (i.e. a pyramid, or a cone) the existing boundaries are of no use. A projectile will collide with a pyramid/cone if it hits an area inside it's XYH coordinates. The existing boundaries don't care that those objects have a pointed top.
And: Containers have solid walls, you could never shoot through a hole.
All you can do is apply a nocollissions tag.

I think we need more coordinates, ie X,Y for the base and X2,Y2 for the top.
How about an outer/inner sphere/cube to define whats solid and what's not ?
It'd be best if we could define the boundaries for each model.
The very simple boundaries for a pyramid could look like this.

objecttype='structure')
modeltype='MilkShape'>path/to/*.txt</model>
<BoundingBox> <X>4</X><Y>4</Y><W>4</W><H>4</H><X2>1</X2><Y2>1</Y2>
</BoundingBox>
</object>

Or with even more coordinates for polygons . . .

( This is supposed to be in English, I hope it's understandable . . )

Just in case you can't figure what I'm goin on about . .

Here's our scene:



Here's where I aim:
The shot should pass at 50% height



And here's where the missile bursts:



If you're close enough, it's impossible to shoot over the pyramid coz it's boundaries are at a 90° angle.
Of course there's the nocollission tag, but what's the point of having a 900ft wall in front of your nose, and being able to shoot right through it ?

Hi Pam:

I hope you enjoyed my reply to your previous post and that you did a little experimenting with what I suggested. It appeared that you had abandoned the topic so I decided to try a few things and had some very nice results, thanks for sharing your ideas.



Adding sufficient life (10K) is of little help if the blast destroys the ground underneath. You can however, make your landscape objects taller and place them directly on the sea floor. This will prevent your objects from falling when hit. It doesn't address the bounding box any of the other issues with objects but it might work ok for altering the appearance of the landscape, or creating small immovable firing obstacles for now. I'm sorry the pyramid isn't working out the way you had hoped but I "think outside the box."

The only down and dirty fix I can think up for you at the moment would be stacked objects. Considering the size of the base on your pryamid I seriously doubt that you'd need to place it on the seabed. The pyramid itself would then be a series of rectangular blocks that get smaller towards the top. Each block would have it's own bounding box and would give you a way to overcome the restiction you are having now. This also gives you a means of making a hole, a tunnel or a hideout, if properly implemented.



About the bounding box, I agree, a bounding box and a shield that follow the contour of the object would be ideal.



How about this instead:

Modifying the core would be required regardless of which option is persued. The model data contains all of the coordinates required. A one time operation on the core to handle this wouldn't clutter up the external files with extra tags and data. This would allow dedicated developers, such as yourself, to concentrate more on the polish and less on the transmission.

The following seems to work fine for the shield issue and requires no excessive code modifications:



Although the bounding box calculations would require more extensive coding, the object type shield appears very easy to implement. I suspect that implementing more tags would prove to be a much less effective method than simply altering the bounding box code to follow the model contours instead of the maximum X,Y and Z dimensions.



Very understandable.

Good Luck and Best wishes,

Rommel

Damn, you are a quick with replies.
I hit the submit button too early, read it again.

As for your answer in the other tread.
I'm well aware what a AH64 is, I just wanted to tease an individual that hasn't talked to me yet, but gives orders for banning me "on sight" because someone "thinks" I'm doing/having "something".
Obviously he's not man (boy) enough to reply . .
Anyway,
about the landscapes:
As of now there is only one bordertype: Water.
It's not difficult to create a new type, i.e. ground.
I found that the idea of different weapon loads for different tanks is already implied in tanktypes.xml.
There's a tag called <disableaccessory>, but afaik it's not been used yet.
I'll give it a try.

Nice idea with placing the models at zero height, Rom. I hadn't considered that.



If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding.

Looks good. Well done.

How could you implement negative slopes with 2D height maps? I can maybe think of a couple of ways you could do it in theory. Wouldn't be easy though.

Certainly would change everything to have that kind of control over the landscape. Maybe if we had the option of VRML landscape files?

I think someone else was talking about modelled bridges etc that you can walk on. I think it would be nice to set models as 'landscape type' so they're made out of ground. Could that work?


Ps:
You could do a pyramid with a height map. There's a 3d editor, top orthographic method.

And you could texture the pyramid with an object ground map, you don’t necessarily need to rely on the rockside texture.

I did the pyras with height maps.
All you need is 4 triangles with the same gradient, but the texture looks lousy.
The textures are wrapped around in a strange way, they have different angles on every side.
I just took pyramids to make it easy to understand what I'm up to.
Right now I'm modeling the Eiffel tower, the Atomium of Bruxelles is already finished.
AND THAT'S where the hightmaps crumble.

Ok, the pyramid was just an example.You can still implement your models in several peices. The Eiffel Tower legs would be 4 seperate models. This would allow you to shoot though, drive through, etc. The first level could be a seperate object as well, and continue to the top using the stacking technique. A bit more work for you to model and assemble I know, but it is possible to do many things that at first glance appear impossible given a different perspective. I'm always good for a "different" perspective. On the tower, you might want to extend the legs to the sea bed unless they are sitting on large (seperate items) pedestals (piedestals). Not that it matters really, only one foot is required to remain undisturbed for the tower to remain undisturbed. Objects that obey the laws of physics? I'm a little too far out of my box as it is now. I'm going to return to working on my mod now.

I wish you great success.

Sincerely,

Rommel

P.S. Are we starting a new fad? Sorry, I can't change my signature just yet. It's a signal that I haven't given up on Apoc Champions returning from the ashes.

You run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking.

what a great looking map!

Looks great. Totaly agree, you basically want some sort of option that uses the actual model shape for the coliision detection. I'll add it to the list

Ooo, that sounds yummy

Just a comment on the part about being able to use a bridge and "drive" over it: This can be done currently, in a roundabout way (but you won't be able to go under it).

I did the following for the wharf on scavenger: Raised the heightmap in the area that the wharf is placed on higher than the wharf will be, then used the flattenarea tag to have it push the visible ground down lower than the wharf. When you use the flattenarea tag, the ground is lowered for rendering, but not for physics calculations. It took some tinkering to get it such that the model of the wharf was just a hair below the original level of the ground. The end result was giving the appearance that the wharf model was the ground, and you could place models on it, drive on it, etc.