Map Question

[Guest Pete]

Hi!

 

one general question....

 

if a character walks under a wood truss or something else... how does the engine know that the character should be drawn in background of the wood truss ?

 

is this realized by the Heigth-Map?

[Guest Pete]

i wrote some articles and now i think this is realized by the overlay definde in the wed files. am i correct?

 

but now.. what are the Height-maps for?

[Waywocket]

i wrote some articles and now i think this is realized by the overlay definde in the wed files. am i correct?

 

but now.. what are the Height-maps for?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"The Height map is responsible for creating the illusion of the characters moving up and down stairs etc. It is created in exactly the same way as the Search map and the Light map but has only fifteen levels. These correspond approximately to feet; however, zero is six feet under and fifteen is seven feet above ground level. Ground level is six, a neutral grey colour."

See http://forums.spellholdstudios.net/index.php?showtopic=12113

[Andyr]

Moving to the appropriate forum, since I don't think this is GemRB-related.

[Avenger]

Damn, for a moment i thought somebody is asking if GemRB will support multiple maps

[Guest Pete]

my question was gemrb-dependent, because i wanted to know how to realize this.

 

but after i tried bg1 (windows / gemrb 0.2.5) i saw that the characters don`t walk behind other things....

 

by the way.... when trying iwd2 i couldn`t create a character... (the last step didn`t work)

[Waywocket]

  my question was gemrb-dependent, because i wanted to know how to realize this.

 

but after i tried bg1 (windows / gemrb 0.2.5) i saw that the characters don`t walk behind other things....

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I believe this requires wallgroup support to be implemented; I hear Avenger's working on it (NB. I might have got the wrong end of the stick somewhere though )

[Andyr]

Oh, right - I'll move it back, then. Sorry.

[Idobek]

Make up your mind boy!

[Avenger]

You can move behind things in bg1 too.

The heightmap has no effect on this, the searchmap does.

The only thing that makes IE 2d is that you can't have 2 different Z coordinates for a given point, so you can't place one actor above another.

Or a bridge which allows passage under itself.

 

Right now i'm working on the gemrb implementation of the wallgroups.

The searchmap is already in.

The heightmap has so little effect on the game that i'll probably not implement it.

[Rabain]

The only use I can see for the Height Map would be if your characters range of vision was extended while standing on a height. This might be useful on large outdoor area's. However I don't think this is implemented in the standard game.

 

Any other use, such as LoS can be circumvented with wallgroups.

[Max]

Theoretically speaking, of course, I would like to see a new type of height map--one with layers. That way you could allow transitions between levels of an area, above and below the bridge, for example. You could control a number of things like this... LOS, melee penalties/bonuses, etc. I guess that would be up t to me to implement, heh.

 

For my own sake then...

Stepping on the highest value of a height map triggers the next layer, if one exists. Stepping on the lowest value triggers the previous layer, if one exists. Each layer has its own special file associated with it as well as its own search map. The special file contains the indices of which walls are active on this level.

 

Conceptually, it doesn't seem too hard. Anyway, I think it could potentially add a lot to puzzles. Think Escher.

[Avenger]

I'm not against this, i always missed real bridges.

[Waywocket]

I've been thinking it would be nice to have something like that. In fact, that was one of the (many) reasons I was disappointed with NWN - with their swanky new 3D engine I assumed you'd be able to go above/below things, but no

[Guest Guest]

Hmm. Is the *only* point of the heightmap to change LoS at different heights? Seems like they could have done a little more with it.