2009-10-22, 02:50 PM
I had thought about making an entirely custom map with a full 3D environment yadda yadda but there are still too many things that can't be gotten around in SOM for it to be worthwhile to me. Yes you can possibly get around the event 'column' issue by turning events off unless youre on the right floor, but you can't get around the switches, chests and inspectable objects when you are standing above or below them. Then there is the SOM lighting issue which is a huge pain in that it lights the map tile at the 0.0 Y coordinate..so if you build say a 3 floor map tile that has the surface outside as the top floor and two underground passages below it, and then apply some ambient lighting..the subterranean floor will get the lighting applied to it and the others will look weird.
I am not against anyone trying to do it, in fact I would like to see what people could come up with, but I really think the results will always prove dissappointing or terribly frustrating.
Just fyi I have dabbled in map tiles that span a 3x3 square (6 x 6 meters) and they work fine without having dissappearing objects. The only real pain in the ass with such a large map tile is object placement on the blank map slots you have to populate the other surrouding 8 pieces with. Other than the tiles immediately touching the one in the center where you place the main map piece itself, its a wild guess where things need to go on the completely blank ones.
Another warning for folks who are going to create custo map pieces...as I have some experience here. Building your map pieces with an advanced modeller is going to leave you banging your head against the wall due to the way SOM uses your collision files. The .mhm files are extremely picky and troubleshooting them is not entirely intuitive. If you are going to try to create an .mhm file from your highly detailed 3D map piece file then expect alot of problems with walking through walls, getting stuck on the floor where there is no step up and even warping players to different map pieces for no explainable reason.
In my opinion, the project of making an entirely custom map is just impossible....but hey, I challenge anyone to prove me wrong!
I am not against anyone trying to do it, in fact I would like to see what people could come up with, but I really think the results will always prove dissappointing or terribly frustrating.
Just fyi I have dabbled in map tiles that span a 3x3 square (6 x 6 meters) and they work fine without having dissappearing objects. The only real pain in the ass with such a large map tile is object placement on the blank map slots you have to populate the other surrouding 8 pieces with. Other than the tiles immediately touching the one in the center where you place the main map piece itself, its a wild guess where things need to go on the completely blank ones.
Another warning for folks who are going to create custo map pieces...as I have some experience here. Building your map pieces with an advanced modeller is going to leave you banging your head against the wall due to the way SOM uses your collision files. The .mhm files are extremely picky and troubleshooting them is not entirely intuitive. If you are going to try to create an .mhm file from your highly detailed 3D map piece file then expect alot of problems with walking through walls, getting stuck on the floor where there is no step up and even warping players to different map pieces for no explainable reason.
In my opinion, the project of making an entirely custom map is just impossible....but hey, I challenge anyone to prove me wrong!
- Todd DuFore (DMPDesign)
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