I'm "on the market", so to speak, for a good terrain system and I like the seamless nature of the Swift system as the game I'm envisioning would make excellent use of a seamless world setup (no, it's not a MMORPG :-p). I'm curious about a few things though...
1. Control over the terrain:
Basically, how much control do you have over the terrain in this system? Is there support for holes in the ground so you can build "into" it for things like caves and the like?
2. How is texturing handled:
Is it a deal of a single, large color map with a detail texture tiled across it? Or, is it like the Torque engine system where you have layers of textures that can be painted, erased, blended by height, slope, etc? Or is it just arbitrary tiling of textures across the surface?
3. #2 sorta ties into this.. what kind of support is there for blending from one texture set into another? For example.. Running through an open field would have greens and some browns for dirt/grass.. then you enter a forest area where you'd have leaves and some green, mossy texturing going on perhaps.. then the terrain leads into a boggy area, so now you have dark, muddy and murky textures, before heading into a mountainous area... and so forth.. How is this handled? Again, I know this ties into #2 as it's dependent on how the texturing is handled, but it's an additional detail I'm curious about.
4. Placement of objects:
I don't mean random scattering of trees, boulders, etc.. I mean deliberate placement of structures, buildings and the like? How is this handled? How much "hands-on" access do you get to such objects to make sure they're positioned, scaled, rotated and such as you want them?
Overall, I like the looks/sound of the terrain engine in and of itself.. but it's the integration with all the other elements that come into a play within a complete game environment that I'm concerned about.. Thanks!
1. Control over the terrain:
Basically, how much control do you have over the terrain in this system? Is there support for holes in the ground so you can build "into" it for things like caves and the like?
2. How is texturing handled:
Is it a deal of a single, large color map with a detail texture tiled across it? Or, is it like the Torque engine system where you have layers of textures that can be painted, erased, blended by height, slope, etc? Or is it just arbitrary tiling of textures across the surface?
3. #2 sorta ties into this.. what kind of support is there for blending from one texture set into another? For example.. Running through an open field would have greens and some browns for dirt/grass.. then you enter a forest area where you'd have leaves and some green, mossy texturing going on perhaps.. then the terrain leads into a boggy area, so now you have dark, muddy and murky textures, before heading into a mountainous area... and so forth.. How is this handled? Again, I know this ties into #2 as it's dependent on how the texturing is handled, but it's an additional detail I'm curious about.
4. Placement of objects:
I don't mean random scattering of trees, boulders, etc.. I mean deliberate placement of structures, buildings and the like? How is this handled? How much "hands-on" access do you get to such objects to make sure they're positioned, scaled, rotated and such as you want them?
Overall, I like the looks/sound of the terrain engine in and of itself.. but it's the integration with all the other elements that come into a play within a complete game environment that I'm concerned about.. Thanks!