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Creating a terrain of tiles from an dimensional array
Hello :D commUnity! I apologise for my lack of terminology, please bare with me I am a newb. *Edit I'm using javascript as it's what most the tutorials I find are using.
I have been following the Walker Boy Studio tutorials and they have been a great source of information, plus I have read countless other bits of information from many other sites and sources. After the amount of reading I have done it would be logical to assume I could or would understand how to create a terrain of square tiles in a grid, like a chess board. Yet I just can't get my head around it. I know that I need to store the positions of my tiles in dimensional arrays, I know i need to make verticies to make a mesh which would make the tile. I guess what I am asking for is a dumbed down explanation of how to make a chessboard. If anyone knows of some good documentation that will help me on this that would be great or if anyone feels they could explain it to me then that too would be awesome. Just remember while I have watched alot of videos the terminology just confuses me so please use english where possible. Also I need an idiots answer lol, fi. Why do I goto a shop? An answer like "to buy something" doesn't help me understand why I went to the shop, it just tells me what I went for. An answer like, "The shop sells items to people so they don't have produce their own" is a much better answer. It tells me what a shop is and why I would need to use it. I hope that helps someone to help me a bit more.
My goal is literally just to learn how to make a mesh which I can repeat as a grid of tiles, a game you can use for an example is Wurm Online. The tiled/terrain system is exactly what I am trying to recreate, not blocks like MineCraft, but flat 2D planes repeated over and over which make up the geometry by variying the heights of each verticies.
So yeah, please any information you might have you think would benefit me or links you can share, then please share them with me. Bare in mind I have read alot of the common ones found from google and they aren't helping I'm just more and more lost within all the different features and words.
Oh and I'm really not interested in all the bump mapping and UV and all that other funky stuff that terrains normally have, it just confuses me lol. A really basic grid of planes is my goal as I just want to learn how its done and whats going on. I did look at project examples but got lost within all the other bits like textures and bump maps and all the rest of it.
So again sorry for my lack of terminology but I hope you understand what I am wanting to do and can hopefully help me to achieve it.
Thanks.
P.S Please don't just tell me to go away and read more about learning, you need to understand I understand things differently I'm a practical learner, you can tell me a million times in words but until I do it I can't see how it works to understand what happened. I am willing to read it's no problem it just doesn't sink in.
Also, I just wanted to mention I'm not looking for a working snippet of code, I don't like hand outs. If you think by using some code as an example will be helpful in making me understand, then sure use it.
I need a plain english description of making a terrain, most tutorials just say "click add terrain" none I've found are actually explaining anything about whats going on. They just say about using the terrain tools to sculpt your terrain and do this, do that, but never explain why. Then there are ones telling me I can use an algorithm to generate terrains for me with perlin noise and marching beads or w/e and so on. This is just confusing the hell out of me. Then it starts going on about base resolutions and height maps and all the rest, I do not understand.
Surely someone has something to suggest to help me out.
Please :(
I'm going to leave this question and go do more revision as I imagine I'm getting no response because I asked for people no to just say go learn more. The point of this post was to learn, just to point that out. Reading a static bit of text is great an all but you learn alot more from interactions with others. Atleast I do anyway. So, please feel free to speak down to me, if it helps you want to help me understand I don't $$anonymous$$d, I just really want to learn but I'm struggling a bit. I just wanna add I have passed the first 3 exams of the Walker Boys failed on the forth with 50/100. I'm working on passing the 4th.
Thanks.
with consideration, probably don't want to sound condescending (not knowing your experience or profeciency with coding and/or game makers). And I'm curious how you got the impression that most responses would be 'go and learn'.
Building a board by creating a mesh is going to be trickier than you think, and more than UV's will be involved. You'll also have to consider the colliders for these (as you'll need colliders at some stage I'm sure).
I suggest you start by using native objects ( the in-built objects like cube and sphere). They already exist, they have a shape that you can scale to your needs, they have colliders, and they are easy to render (paint, put an image/texture on).
Then look at arrays (or Lists) to store the positions of each cube. (when I say cube , I mean one that is scaled so it is basically a flat square)
If this is not much help, or you want some more details on certain aspects, please leave a comment.
Sorry I couldn't give more info, for what I could mostly gleam from your question is you want to create a chessboard-style terrain.
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/28223/what-is-the-best-way-to-make-modular-selectable-sq.html
Thanks for replying :)
It does seem my post is a little all over the place, maybe this represents my confusion, haha.
The reason for assu$$anonymous$$g people would tell me to go and learn is from experience lol. $$anonymous$$ost help forums tend to adopt this attitude of "if you're not willing to help yourself then we're going to give you a hard time when ever you ask a question". I was just assu$$anonymous$$g that's why I had no response yet.
I was recently complimented as being a "Polymath", I understand this as being someone who knows alittle about alot but alot about very little. *edit "yes I know that is not its definition" I'm not bragging :P I mean that I have bits of information about many languages and other working of things and it's confusing me. I'm not sure what I need, I just know I don't seem to be understanding.
Ok so to be clear,
I want to make a grid of tiles, the link at the top of this comment provides an example of a similar code in C#. $$anonymous$$y problem is I can not seem to understand it to replicate it. I need a "Dummies guide" to what it is doing and why, I have to know why because everything happens for a reason and knowing the reason makes you wise.
The Walker Boys tutorials are great I have learned a fair bit, I just wish they had a more indepth section about terrains. Like understanding the heightmaps and all the rest, because they do a decent job of explaining, granted I have to repeat the video few times, sometimes >.< but it sinks in eventually.
I'm just going to go and bash my head against it maybe it'll pop right in there who knows lol. I appreciate your reply none the less. If I still can't do it after passing the 4th exam I'll be back armed with a bit more knowledge.
Thanks again,
HexD
Yeah, it's a shame that the general attitude is "if you don't know, why should I tell you?" . This probably comes from the mass of people that seem to not be able to use a search engine. But we were all noobs once!
I'm stuck with my own coding probs at the moment, but I shall keep this in $$anonymous$$d and help if I can. Just to clarify : if you could use the terrain editor, would you rather use that than creating you own environment?
Well The terrain I want will be very angular is probably the best word lol, I don't really know how I can explain it to you. The game I'm using for inspiration is very unique and is the only game I've played with the style of terrain I want to recreate.
You really need to see it to understand what I mean;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSiYpyGLFrs
Please excuse the guy talking he is doing a video about the game and its his first time and the game is kinda tough to play at first, but in his video you do get to see the terrain fairly well and how the tiles are working to make the angular terrain. The tiles have tile borders where you can build walls and fences and things. The game is made in Java and I think its 2.5D but it doesn't use the y axis I hear, everything is done using a heightmap if that makes sense to you lol. If you really wanted to get a good idea of the terrain then it is a free to play game but skills are capped at 20 points ins$$anonymous$$d of 100. I would suggest trying it just because too. It really is a unique game and one that tends to go un noticed.
Notch of $$anonymous$$ineCraft used to work on Wurm, I think he did the lighting and some other things not sure. But yeh check it out, its a great game :P
Back to your question lol, If I could make the Unity terrain editor make a terrain like Wurms then I would use it. I wanted to make my own as I thought it would be easier then trying to edit these more smoother higher poly terrains you get in the fancy looking games.
Answer by Taffer · Jul 27, 2012 at 03:03 PM
Behold, Nick Breslin's "Griddy", a Unity grid library supporting square and hex grids:
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