2009-10-21, 07:26 PM
Well SOM works by tiling 3D pieces over a 2D grid, and this way of working is limited by SOM itself, not the map editor. So if you can't live with that, changing to a different process would have to mean abandoning SOM altogether. SOM is both a a novelty and a license to legitimately print KF games, as well as a great collection of assets. When I started working with SOM I thought the 2D tile thing was the most hampering idea for a DirectX game. It's really a throwback to KF1. However once I started using it, the tiling thought process began to grow on me, and I started to appreciate it for both the reuse-ability and intellectual constraint. That said, a future version of SOM could definitely use the concept of many layered maps, but the basic premise is still solid I think.
You just have to be creative about structuring your world. It's not really 2D... it's more like 2.5D because you get to play with the elevation. One of the most fun aspects of SOM I find is play with optical illusions. I'm constantly setting up optical illusions which rely on the fact I know where the player can and cannot get to and the vantage points from there. It's just a novel way of going about things, and also reminds you that not everything need be technically modeled in a VR space.
If you (4 degrees from M.I.T.) friend really did analyze SOM itself in a substantial way, he may have decompiled it. If he knows of a way to decompile it, then we'd like to have the decompiler output for our own purposes.
I can make a new map editor that welds pieces on the fly to create unique multi-level pieces to be reused by the final build. I can rebuild SOM from scratch to use the same concepts but have a completely free multilayer and map welding system builtin, but this latter option would not be really be backwards compatible with the original SOM... or at least it would violate the essence of the original to make it so I think.
You just have to be creative about structuring your world. It's not really 2D... it's more like 2.5D because you get to play with the elevation. One of the most fun aspects of SOM I find is play with optical illusions. I'm constantly setting up optical illusions which rely on the fact I know where the player can and cannot get to and the vantage points from there. It's just a novel way of going about things, and also reminds you that not everything need be technically modeled in a VR space.
If you (4 degrees from M.I.T.) friend really did analyze SOM itself in a substantial way, he may have decompiled it. If he knows of a way to decompile it, then we'd like to have the decompiler output for our own purposes.
I can make a new map editor that welds pieces on the fly to create unique multi-level pieces to be reused by the final build. I can rebuild SOM from scratch to use the same concepts but have a completely free multilayer and map welding system builtin, but this latter option would not be really be backwards compatible with the original SOM... or at least it would violate the essence of the original to make it so I think.