New Content??

[dendwaler]

When i builded Turtle Isle, the first version used triangle mesh as bounds nearly everywhere .

It was unplayable.

I have done nearly everything to improve the performance and succeeded in it.

What is done.

I removed all the " mesh triangle bounds" for every object in the age,

then I putted each object into an invisible " cube" with hull bounds set.

7 visual regions are made . The mountains are used as visual blockers in such a way that you do not notice the regions to pop up when walking around.

Every object has a little alcsript to difine in which region(s) it should be visible.

The landscape has an organic shape and is the only mesh that still has triangle mesh detection.

I have tried to make a simplified underlaying detection mesh with less triangles.Unfortunately this is not possible, because when you do that the simpler mesh does not fit exactly .
The effect is, that the avatar walks several feet above or beneath the textured mesh.
The only solution was to make a walking path, but then the freedom of movement on Turtle Isle decreases dramaticcally.

That is why the surface still has triangle mesh detection.
The parts under the swimming area's can of course been separated and do without any detection.

[Karkadann]

Whats a triangle mesh? most of the stuff I do in max has a mesh but its mostly made up of rectangles.
And does this apply to both Max and Blender or just Blender.

[semplerfi]

Whats a triangle mesh? most of the stuff I do in max has a mesh but its mostly made up of rectangles.
And does this apply to both Max and Blender or just Blender.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_mesh

[Karkadann]

OH those things........I usually make the object terrain unless the object is or becomes to complex. In that case I usually use proxy terrain, use alternate shape, or a no show from the component manager.
I also noticed if the object too complex, like a skeleton I tried to export for Halloween it just wont work. the simple stuff like the Cones don't seem to be an issue I have those on hull which seems to use up a minimum apposed to exact is uses up a heck of a lot more depending on the shape like the Cage in Backgammon I had to put on exact so the dice would work properly but neither have a proxy terrain

[Christopher]

Often you can't see the triangles in Max, cause it visually combines two triangles in the same plane to a rectangle. But the rectangles are still exported as to triangles.

Christopher

[Tsar Hoikas]

Dendwaler and Sirius explain my point even better than I can. I guess it's because they actually make the ages--I just hack on the engine itself

In Myst V, they use a LOT of box bounds, maybe because ODE manages it better. That's why the collisions often seem less accurate.

When Myst 5 was made, ODE didn't support convex hulls. I think it does now Anyway, there's a really good post-mortem in the ODE mailing list from Colin Bonstead about using ODE (instead of Havok) in Myst 5.

[Karkadann]

One thing that did cross my mind is Uru was made when computers where not so fast, could all the various strategies for age creation done by Cyan talked about in this thread be a result of Cyan trying to get a very large and elaborate age working on the low end computers of yester-year.? PC's have advances quite a bit since then and im sure they can handle larger ages with out taking all the short cuts.

Or is it the game engine that cant handle the large ages with out using all the Cyan technique

[Tsar Hoikas]

The game engine is actually pretty well optimized. It can blast out a LOT of geometry very quickly. We start running into problems when there are lots of avatars (lots of CPU-based calculations there) or complicated physical meshes (again, complicated CPU calculations). The content is all very low poly with low-memory textures. The MOUL texture budget was 64mb--most video cards sold today have at least 1gb dedicated VRAM--you get the idea.

On a side topic, Gehn 10 will have another fan age added. No spoilers from me.

[Acorn]

On a side topic, Gehn 10 will have another fan age added. No spoilers from me.

great news !

[Wamduskasapa]

Gehn 10 will have another fan age added. No spoilers from me.

ole mighty Tsar I thank Thee