neostralie said:
Swyter, you are saying that 3D modeling software is better than any ad-hoc software for designing maps.
Why every games has it's own mapping software? Just because level designing is NOT 3D modeling.
My objectives is to make a map designer. If someone want an new global map, he will start my soft, can take a look at Calradia and start it's own map from a flat triangulated map.
I want to help reducing the polycount of maps by using the same optimization solutions that you can see in the Calradia map.
I want the user to be sure that the triangulation of the map won't mess with the pathfinder.
Currently, I've take a look on 3 maps, Calradia, Waesteros ACOK and Waestoros AWOIAF. Calradia is ok but AWOIAF maps have little crappy problems of optimization. And ACOK map is a mess.
Here is a little example of triangulation mess you can find in the ACOK Map that is really boring.
You don't seem to understand. I see the need for a map designer, in the sense of a way of adding items, props and other stuff to the game. But the map itself is a standard 3D mesh, it isn't a compound of instances or any kind of "
brush" primitive, or BSP.
That's why Cartographer was made to place and rotate the only game-dependent entities; parties/settlements. Leaving the hard work of shaping the map to your favorite competent 3D editing tool.
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The problems you talked about were about a badly made map, you can make bad maps with any tool, using a dedicated tool doesn't make it intrinsically better. And for the triangular/hexagonal base optimized for navigation, there are many ways of generating this kind of pattern as a boilerplate for future maps.
Code:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_tiling
Take a look, done in a minute in Blender without previous experience. Created a plane, tessellated it a few times using the
Subdivide operator, then
Triangulate (Ctrl-T). Enter
Edit mode, select bottom line of edges of the first row of triangles, move it to the right to turn the first row into equilateral triangles by using
Translate, if you want to move them all automatically don't lose time and up next enable
Proportional editing in the contextual
Operator panel at the bottom-left of your Blender window. In its options mark something like
Orientation: Local,
Proportional editing falloff: Linear, and move them. Now you have your triangular tiling pattern, use the
Array modifier to tile it first horizontally, then duplicate it to do the same vertically. In the
Modifiers panel set the number of tiles and apply a
Relative offset of 1. Also, tick
Merge.
Result:
Boom, nice customizable base map, ready for sculpting or whatever you want. Import the original Native map to compare and fit the scale, previewing with parties on top by bringing it back in Cartographer.
There are some scripts that do the same but programmatically. But as you can see, this is really quick and flexible if you know what you are doing. If you don't the map will look bad no matter whatever cool pro EZ auto-wizard thingie you make.