Problems and Questions

[Wesley Williams]

I have a few problems and questions I have been experiencing when making maps.

1.) WATER
This is really bad. Whenever making a waterblock who's water does not reach the ground, the water is not visible past the scale of the water, but players may still float at that level all across the level. For instance, I made a pool with 64x64x3 water, and it is only visible in the pool, and yet you can float 30 bricks up all across the map. If you dip down below the water, there is no buoyancy. Anyone know the solution to this problem? It would be extremely welcome.

2.) LIGHTING
On interiors, the lighting is always all messed up to where the actual individual shapes of the interior are. Is there any way to fix this? It looks horrible.

3.) PARTICLES
How would I go about making my own particles for my maps. For example, creating custom waterfall particles, fie particles, etc... and packaging them correctly within my map for use. I have no clue how to make a particle from scratch :(

4.) SKYBOXES
Could someone write up or explain how to successfully make your own skybox from nothing? I'm wondering exactly how to do this, and what program to use. I believe Photoshop would be best, and hopefully I'll have it soon. I've tried adding my own skyboxes with the correct sizes for the pieces (in pixels) but can't get it to work. Do you need to do something to the resource.dml? Or is it because I didn't have the overview and underview or whatever?

I may think of more things soon, but please help if you know solutions to any of these problems, as these are my main "no knowledge" areas in Mission Editor.

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[DYLANzzz]

Water:
I don't have access to the mission editor at the moment but I thought water was always like that (It extends infinitely) by definition of the object itself. Think of it as a water table, it's at one level throughout the entire map. I think that the only way this can be accomplished is with a zone?

Interiors:
Relight Scene? Maybe add a few pictures so I can get a better understanding of your problem here.

Particles:
If you can find it, MuffinMix made a HUGE tutorial on particles and explains EVERYTHING. As for the packaging with a map, I'm not too sure. Maybe look at a map that has custom vehicles added and see how they added those to their map.

Skyboxes:
I don't honestly know how torque handles skyboxes as I have never played with it. I've used the source engine which has 6 seperate textures and then uses another files that sticks them all together(it also has to deal with how the files are named).
I know that source and torque are two completely differnt things but I think that they may be quite alike. You may want to try using such as terragen to generate a nice skybox and then adding it to the game. If you wanted to create one from scratch (with no other tools) then I recommend learning how to use a image editor such as Paint.Net, Gimp, Inkscape, Photoshop, etc.

[Wesley Williams]

Water:
Well this saddens me, and if it is so, I would like to use a zone or something so that I can have different water levels in a map. If this isn't possible, oh well.

Interiors:
I can't even tell you how often I relight the scene.


(Yes, this is my Downtown map undergoing construction)

Particles:
Cool, I'll be checking out the tutorial then.

Skyboxes:
I've never tried using source, but I've already messed with Terragen and Spacescape, and couldn't get either one to work properly for me, because I don't know how to get the above and below shots and how to get the resource file to go with it and whatever. This is something I really want a tutorial made about, as it is important to make your own skyboxes to fit maps.

[Red_Guy]

I have a few problems and questions I have been experiencing when making maps.

1.) WATER
This is really bad. Whenever making a waterblock who's water does not reach the ground, the water is not visible past the scale of the water, but players may still float at that level all across the level. For instance, I made a pool with 64x64x3 water, and it is only visible in the pool, and yet you can float 30 bricks up all across the map. If you dip down below the water, there is no buoyancy. Anyone know the solution to this problem? It would be extremely welcome.

Water blocks work best when the scale is a power of 2, or an even number.  try your scale at: 64x64x2 or 64x64x4 and see what you get.

2.) LIGHTING
On interiors, the lighting is always all messed up to where the actual individual shapes of the interior are. Is there any way to fix this? It looks horrible.

is this on a dif interior? or a dts object?  each are handled differently.  a .dif file should cast shadows onto a terrain object depending on where the sun is in your map.
a dts file ... I dunno.

For skyboxes - check garagegames.com 
I know you need a .dml file and some images, and I know  the images have to be in a certain order.  beyond that - go search on garagegames.com

[DYLANzzz]

Interior:
As Red_Guy said is it a dts or a dif.

On one portion it looks like its lit using vertex lighting which I understand is it calculates the lighting at every vertex and then averages it together on the face to give shading. I think there is an option to turn this off in options or something (though I'm not sure if the checkbox really does anything as it doesn't affect how bricks are lit but it may affect what you are doing).

[Wesley Williams]

The interior is a Legacy DIF. I'll check out the lighting options on it... Hopefully theres something.

I'll check garagegames then to find out about skyboxes, though someone really should write up a brief explanation on how it is best to make a skybox.

[Red_Guy]

ok for a DIF file... and from what I remember, you should see this:
- pick the shape from the mission editor and place it
- it shows up all BLACK or very very dark.
- Relight the scene, and the dif should show up normal looking.

then depending on where your sun object is placed, you may get shadows on the terrain.

Now if the dif shows up fully lit (non-black), then something went wrong in torque constructor.  what and where, i cant say, as I dont use it -- for just those wierdnesses it creates.

[Wesley Williams]

ok for a DIF file... and from what I remember, you should see this:
- pick the shape from the mission editor and place it
- it shows up all BLACK or very very dark.
- Relight the scene, and the dif should show up normal looking.

then depending on where your sun object is placed, you may get shadows on the terrain.

Now if the dif shows up fully lit (non-black), then something went wrong in torque constructor.  what and where, i cant say, as I dont use it -- for just those wierdnesses it creates.

I know how to use Mission Editor quite well, thank you. This is not my problem...

[takato14]

I have a few problems and questions I have been experiencing when making maps.

1.) WATER
This is really bad. Whenever making a waterblock who's water does not reach the ground, the water is not visible past the scale of the water, but players may still float at that level all across the level. For instance, I made a pool with 64x64x3 water, and it is only visible in the pool, and yet you can float 30 bricks up all across the map. If you dip down below the water, there is no buoyancy. Anyone know the solution to this problem? It would be extremely welcome.

2.) LIGHTING
On interiors, the lighting is always all messed up to where the actual individual shapes of the interior are. Is there any way to fix this? It looks horrible.

3.) PARTICLES
How would I go about making my own particles for my maps. For example, creating custom waterfall particles, fie particles, etc... and packaging them correctly within my map for use. I have no clue how to make a particle from scratch :(

4.) SKYBOXES
Could someone write up or explain how to successfully make your own skybox from nothing? I'm wondering exactly how to do this, and what program to use. I believe Photoshop would be best, and hopefully I'll have it soon. I've tried adding my own skyboxes with the correct sizes for the pieces (in pixels) but can't get it to work. Do you need to do something to the resource.dml? Or is it because I didn't have the overview and underview or whatever?

I may think of more things soon, but please help if you know solutions to any of these problems, as these are my main "no knowledge" areas in Mission Editor.

Welcome to Torque.

[Wesley Williams]

Welcome to Torque.

That's what I said.

[Deathwishez]

1.) WATER
It seems that your Z scale is too low

2.) LIGHTING
Most lighting problems are from scaling an interior in the ME. Textures and lighting effects are scaled with in object.

3.) PARTICLES
Don't make a particle from scratch. Check out different particles, and toy with the features. Later, you can make emitters for your particles (Like I did for Valhalla's waterfall). Particle emitters won't always show up at first, so give it a moment. If it doesn't show, relight, save, disconnect, restart, enter ME. If it doesn't show up after that, you did something wrong.

4.) SKYBOXES
To get a good understanding of skyboxes, go to a map like Skyland, and tone down the quality to your lowest setting. You'll start to see that the sky actually looks like a box. Making skyboxes from scratch are extremely hard. It's best to have a single picture that displays the full 360 view, then cut it up.

When in doubt, mess around with the features. You may not know what something does unless you drastically change it.

[Wesley Williams]

For the water... that may just be the case, thanks. I probably have to put the z scale at 8.

Lighting... haven't scaled anything with this downtown, actually. Not many things, maybe one or two, anyways.

I'll try that with particles, but I still have like no understanding about them.

For the skybox, Ive tried cutting up a 360 panorama to no avail.

[Wesley Williams]

For the water... that may just be the case, thanks. I probably have to put the z scale at 8.

Set it to 8... no cigar.

[Red_Guy]

Set it to 8... no cigar.

send me your .mis file and i'll have a look.

[Dglider]

With the lighting thing.  Do you mean it's hard to tell where one object stops, and the other begins?

If so I have the solution.  Don't use the blank colors.  Use textures.  Any sort of texture as long as it's got some sort of blemishes on it.  Heck, you could even make a transparent concrete overlay and apply it to all the colors.  Make your own "concrete" color pack.  :3