That's not what I meant. What I meant was, can you import geometry to use for walls, so they're not all simply flat quads? I'm assuming not.
Unfortunately, I don't have any headway on the project. I haven't really started development beyond concept. I posted some samples a while back that were modeled and rendered in 3ds max, but they were only to demonstrate perspective, which has always been difficult for me due to texture memory constaints and my desire to consolidate ranges to mip-maps. It looks like I probably won't be able to do that, but I have another idea that's just as good — actually better, where memory is concerned — but will take longer to implement.
I'm not going the 3-D route. At least, not yet. My greastest inhibitor is and has always been a lack of motivation. I have the technical know-how to proceed, but personal issues keep me from taking that first step.
As for Gambit's suggestion regarding walls, you might consider using two textures that tile together like 1-2-1-2, and alternate between north-south and east-west, so that the textures wrap seamlessly around a single cell. Here's a little diagram demonstrating what I mean (might be broken if my server is down):
Algorithmically, it would look something like this:
If facing tile X is positive and facing tile Y is positive,
— render north/south wall using left texture
— render east/west wall using right texture
If facing tile X is positive and facing tile Y is negative,
— render north/south wall using right texture
— render east/west wall using left texture
If facing tile X is negative and the facing tile Y is positive,
— render north/south wall using right texture
— render east/west wall using left texture
If facing tile X is negative and facing tile Y is negative,
— render north/south wall using left texture
— render east/west wall using right texture
I
think that will give you proper results, but you'll need to test it more than I did with this crappy Photoshop drawing. Of course, these operations can be consolidated — I simply didn't take the time — but this should give you a good groundwork. Bottom line: you need two contiguous textures that blend seamlessly but look slightly different. The rest you can generate algorithmically at load-time.
Or, instead of using two textures, you could load one large texture twice as wide as it is tall, and use the above method to generate texture coordinates. That would eliminate the additional SetTexture call, which I would recommend.
If you want one of us to make these textures for you, we can. I certainly can, and I'm sure cows can if he has time.
Question - Suule mentioned a few posts back that I should talk to PaulS about the dynamics of the engine, can I ask who PaulS is ? anyone ? thanks.
I will have a look at this tonight, very exciting.
