House with optional front porch problem...

[meshcarver 12]

Hi guys,

I'm going through lots of houses atm, modelling them so they're each quite different from each other for variations sake.

Ideally, when it comes to placing them on my map, I'd love to be able to have separate "front porch" objects I could independently place in front of the entrance doors of SOME of the houses, again, for variation.

If I modelled a porch onto every house, then every house would have one so that'd break down the variation.

So what I'm thinking of doing would be to have say 10 houses, and 5 front porches in different styles (As they do in STALKER) so I'd end up with a lot of potential variations there mixing and matching them.

Now, this isn't a problem in itself, but when it comes to roadwayLODs/geoLODS etc, I could see potential for AI screw ups..?

Does anyone know, if I model a house with fine working AI pathing (roadwayLODS going into the house) and all working etc... if I placed a porch object (Almost like a little wooden entrance box over the front door area) against the house, could it potentially really mess up AI, like they'd get confused as to how to go into the house, as the porch object is blocking their view of the roadwayLOD 1?

As an alternative, I could easily model two versions of each house, one with porch, the other without, but would this "doubling up" of assets be too much for a map to handle do you think..?

I hope I've worded this correctly for you guys to understand, as I'm a tad jet lagged and also more than a little drunk lol..! ;)

Anyway, good to be back here..!

[meshcarver 12]

...does anyone know how this one would work please?

[PuFu 4600]

doubleinh app would increase the size of it way too much i'd say.

for the pathfinding, there could be issues, but in the end with a bit of testing and trial and error, it's your best bet

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Hi meanmachine1! What you got there is awesome idea and much similar to what I've been pondering with planned modular building system.

I first thought of making some parts of the buildings as proxies that could be switched on and off via script, but then it wouldn't work on buildings placed in visitor I think. Also if it worked, some randomizing script would then make all buildings appear different everytime? and though it would be cool its not what Im aiming at.

Next idea is rather more tedious, but could be accomplished with some of those tools that are used to make object templates. Making a template out of all possible combinations and manually placing them where needed. Or if possible placing suitable placeholder building and exporting that list out and then replacing the entries with random template. This would probably need some program to do the math with all the different angles and heights so as visitor places objects aligned to the ground height by default the heights would then be properly aligned as well.

There are lots of ifs and buts here as im just working on a theory here. But Ill let you know if I succeed!

[bushlurker 46]

I first thought of making some parts of the buildings as proxies that could be switched on and off via script, but then it wouldn't work on buildings placed in visitor I think.

Yup - sadly, proxies don't show in Visitor/Buldozer, so they might not be the best choice for this sort of context...

Actually - "snap points" in the memory LOD of the main buildings at appropriate points, plus corresponding points on the "porches" would allow them to snap together precisely in Visitor... that - should - also ensure that stuff like roadways line up properly and everything would probably work OK.

The one major drawback with memory points is - they won't work on a binarized model... That's why the basic road section models (which have memory points so they snap together in Visitor) are installed in mlod format along with the tools, rather than unpacked from the game content - where the same models exist, but are in binarised odol format.

For your own personal placement needs on any terrain you're personally creating, obviously this isn't an issue - you're making the buildings anyway, so naturally they'll exist as mlod models on your P:\ drive - you can just add those directly to Visitors object list - place them as usual - snap points will work nicely for you...

At packing time you'd pack your buildings = binarized models in a .pbo, and your terrain = the same...

Just like the Arma game content we unpack to P:\ for use in terrains...

Other people could do that - with your permission of course... unpack your buildings .pbo to their P:\ drive... That would allow them to use the buildings in a terrain just like we use the OA ones, for example - no problems there... but - they'd be binarized - so the snap points wouldn't work for them...

B

[meshcarver 12]

Hey thanks for the feedback guys... I reckon I'll basically make about 15 different houses altogether and just have some with porches and some without... Saves time and potential mess ups.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

:D Might indeed be the fastest solution afterall. Gotta try that snappointing myself though. :D Sounds just too awesome and would actually solve my problem with couple of larger building complexes.