Level Creation, Prefabs and Colliders

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I have finished conceptualizing my game (finally!) and now I am onto the actual modeling of the scenery / buildings since the characters are done.

I have run into a problem... well more of a workflow issue, really.

It's going to be a first-person game primarily run in underground scenes, so that kind of eliminates the "terrain" pallet completely.

The level that I'm modeling at the moment (when finished) will have 1 or 2 staircases, a few buildings, and rocks along the walls to give it the underground cave feel. I am currently stuck at deciding how to go about dealing with all of the scene objects:

+Should I upload a basic room with literally nothing and then fill it with everything such as staircases, buildings, signs, rocks, stalagmite, holes for the water to fill etc.

Or

+Should I upload a more-complex room with all of the bells and whistles minus the higher-poly buildings and scene props?

If I do the "Basic Scene" I can easily attach a mesh collider. (255 poly max I believe?)

There would be many many many positives to doing it the other way, though I would have to split everything up into separate objects, attach mesh colliders(god forbid non-mesh)

T L D R:

Should I make a level with everything aside from higher poly structures included and import those later, or should I make a level with nothing included except a very basic frame?

Also in terms of colliders-- Is mesh the best way to go for an internal level, or should I split everything up into like 20-50 objects and use basic cube/sphere colliders?

Answer 1

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Answer by sparkzbarca · Nov 08, 2012 at 01:30 AM

you should do A.

The problem with B is deciding you dont like the look of it. If a sign and a rock are actually part of the rockface mesh you cant move it without going into blender and stuff and then reimporting.

Rocks and signs should be seperate game objects.

Also you can then copy and modify a rock to make a new rock for the next level.

Object oriented programming. Things should strive to be independent of other things.

If you look at the Borderlands game it has millions of guns, it does that by randomly combining barrels with types of ammo with types of scope with different rates of fire with different stocks.

But really its 20 guns they just instead of making 20 guns made 20 stocks and 20 barrels and 20 scopes but you combine them and you get

20 19 18 different guns. Thats alot of guns and that assumes your variance is only 3 parts to each gun.

They ahve like 10 b/c they include Rate of Fire and special abilities and stuff as well.

Split your scene into pieces and you can combine old features in new ways to make new areas.

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Lairinus · Nov 08, 2012 at 01:56 AM 0

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Okay, thanks!

That almost completely answers my question... one other point of clarification though if you don't $$anonymous$$d too much :)

Is it best to do it room-by-room and use vertex snapping to bring everything together, or just make the entire level "bones" in blender beforehand?

I don't imagine having more than 500ish polies for even an entire level. All I really need to do is re-size + flip the normals of a cube, really, and add a few dividers in. But as you said it would be less customization down the road.

Is one way better than the other?

sparkzbarca · Nov 08, 2012 at 02:14 AM 0

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probably best to keep that all one object. Just because its not likely you'll be making changes to the core layout. Basically if you think you'd reuse it then divide it up but if not dont bother.

In some cases it can make sense. For example if your doing a hospital, the patient rooms are really damn near clones. But if your not going to be reusing stuff then just make it one object.

Lairinus · Nov 08, 2012 at 02:19 AM 0

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Okay.. time to model lol.

Thanks again.

Answer 2

Answer by sparkzbarca · Nov 07, 2012 at 11:30 PM

you should try your hardest to not use mesh colliders. the difference between ensuring 255 vertices dont get crossed and a bounds check from the center of a cube.....

I mean a cube is literally pretty much a distance check as is a sphere.

if your so close to the center of the square or sphere your in collision. otherwise your not.

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Lairinus · Nov 07, 2012 at 11:35 PM 0

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Thanks for the response!

I was looking around (awhile ago, actually) and it seems that there are a lot of issues with the mesh collider, just didn't want to believe it.

The main reason why I didn't want to use a simple collider is because I will have many doors/entranceways in my level, and a typical collider covers all of those unless you break it up into a few objects (probably 20-30 for me) and apply a collider to each one.

Still kind of wondering about what I should do in terms of level-designing though:

Do I design the bare bones of the level, or do I design the entire thing ($$anonymous$$us higher poly structures) and import it in one piece?

Level Creation, Prefabs and Colliders

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