[General] How to make walls

[Paulus]

Hi there

Im making some adjustments to my map. I made a castle and used those ugly terrain from the worldeditor. After some what searching i found increadible models from oGRe. So with these models i want to replace the old walls. Now, its a lot more work that those silly terrain walls i made. Now i have some questions.
1. There is a limmit for doodads? Because these walls use a loth of them. Also pathingblokkers.
2. I use invisible platform (large/small) and use them so the hero can walk higher. This is good?
3. What are common mistakes made by wall makers?
4. Have any tips for me?

Thx in advance

Old with ugly terrain

The new walls

Also sometimes ugly

 

[Tickles]

1. There is a doodad limit, but you can use NewGen to surpass it under the tab at the top: Grimoire > Enable No Limits. But if I were you, I'd be more concerned about too many polygons on the screen at once possibly causing lag for people with slower processors. To prevent this, make sure your camera angles (especially for cinematics) don't show too much of the wall at once.
   
   
2. Yes, most people use that method. I prefer lower poly objects like flat panes which I'll attach to this post. For the file attached, just make sure the red tinting is 0 in the object editor for it to become invisible.
   
   
3. What annoys me the most is when a unit is running across a wall and the unit disappears for a moment or longer due to lack of walkable destructibles in certain areas. Make sure that every piece of your wall has a walkable destructible with no gaps for units to fall through. Stack multiple walkable destructibles on each other if you have to, and that's why I like to use the lowest polygon platforms possible. Also make sure that you create sloped walkable platforms for stairs. If you don't slope them, unit movement over each step is horribly jagged which is demonstrated in the example map.
   
   
4. Shift + click in the destructible editor under Art - Max Roll Angle (degrees) with a negative value to angle pathing platforms or any general object in the object editor like the walkable pathing I used in the example map.

And on a side note, props to you for going the extra mile to make nicer terrain and not using Blizzard cliffs

 

[aussj5link]

That looks awesome! Eventually there will be large structures in my campaign and I'd love to know how you made this so I can make some pretty cool stuff.

 

[GreeN!X]

Tickles pretty much answered your questions.

For the last image though, you could press Ctrl+PageUp or Ctrl+PageDown to lower or elevate your doodads so they become aligned.

You could also use walkable doodads so that you don't have to use invisible platforms anymore. This allows the unit to walk on the top-most layer of the model.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

You could also use walkable doodads so that you don't have to use invisible platforms anymore. This allows the unit to walk on the top-most layer of the model.

This. Invisible platforms have the problem that they remove the shadow of units walking on top of them. Use Walkable destructables.

If you only got a 2D plane for the ground, here's a tip to align them properly on the Z-axis:

Go to a remote place at your map; make it completely flat with the flatten tool.
Now place your 2D planes... due to the ground being flat they should all align properly. Now drag-select them all, use ctrl+page up to raise them once. This makes it so that moving those platforms around will not adapt to the ground level anymore. Now you can move them around freely, without having to care about the height anymore.

 

[Veritas 117]

Actually if you select all the doodads you want to have at the same level and press "Y" it will set a uniform doodad height and then you can continue to raise and lower them together to get them to lay uniformly.

If you choose Zweibelchen's method (which is also a great method) make sure you have Reset Fixed Object Heights unticked in the Advanced menu otherwise they will all sink back to the ground when you move them.

Good luck!

 

[Vinz]

Actually if you select all the doodads you want to have at the same level and press "Y" it will set a uniform doodad height and then you can continue to raise and lower them together to get them to lay uniformly.

Never knew about this, sounds awesome

 

[Veritas 117]

Never knew about this, sounds awesome

If you look under the Tools menu you can see it when you have doodads selected. I found out about it recently and it is invaluable when trying to set invisible platforms and stuff at the same height.

 

[Dr Super Good]

1. There is a limmit for doodads? Because these walls use a loth of them. Also pathingblokkers.

Yes there is a limit to doodads. Each is a separate object so eventually you will hit some limit. The editor may limit you sooner however but that is just good old stupid World Edit.

You should not be using pathing blockers at all since you can in theory directly manipulate the pathing map file (which is how Doodads like pathing blocker work). Unfortunately good old silly World Edit decided that this very useful feature is unimportant so it can only really be done manually.

2. I use invisible platform (large/small) and use them so the hero can walk higher. This is good?

Or you could just make the wall walkable sections out of destructibles and make them walkable. That is even better as it saves objects.

3. What are common mistakes made by wall makers?

Z conflict due to overlapping geometry covering exactly the same space. Computer graphics cannot cope with 2 plains intersecting each other resulting in nasty, noise like patterns as it cannot distinctly decide the colour of the involved pixels.

4. Have any tips for me?

Avoid perfect corners. In real life most edges were curved to some extent as it was not only easier to build but also stronger. Rectangles are easy to plan and build in games but in real life few things were ever that perfect.

 

[Paulus]

Thx all, those tips are helping me out alot!.

First: sorry for not responding sooner to this. But my internet sucked.

@ Tickles:
+ Rep. Thx for the map and the tips. I'm going to use that slope thing. Now my units jump up the stairs .

@Ausj5Link
Keep practicing! The models are from oGRe- Refuge in Ruins.

@Greenix
Thx

@Zwiebelch
Indeed, the shadows or footprints are looking stupid if the show up or just dissapear.
I also used to flatten a space in the map and use the models from there. But now i use "y", best invention ever!

@Veritas
Life safer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Dr Super Good
Thx for the tips. About the corners, i was thinking the same think. All castles i know have rounded corners, but for me it difficult to make and much more effort. Maybe one day i will change that.

New Images!