Factories and Recyclers

[Clavin12]

What exactly do you call the little hard-point where the ship is built? How do you build a collision mesh?

[mrtwosheds]

hp_vehicle.

Start with a simple plane the same size as the terrain plate, extrude it into a shape that covers the recycler, keep it as simple as possible and make sure there is at least 8 units of flat (0 height) collision all around the building so that ai units can path round it. Do not triangulate.

[AHadley]

Though the community is beginning to lean towards more detailed collision models now... simple bounding boxes can seem a little odd though they're better then the more common sphere in most cases.

[mrtwosheds]

Simple collisions are best for buildings, there is no accuracy in ship-building collisions anyway, making them complex will just put stress on the game for no noticeable improvement in game play.
If you design the building well, the collision should be a near perfect fit in most places anyway.

[Nielk1]

I use complex collisions. The issue is they break. But if you get them to work, everything is better. Or at least, seems more real and correct.

Though, it takes skill not to make an overly complex collision when a simple one will do. Pilot interaction is when you need nice complex ones.

[AHadley]

I use complex collisions. The issue is they break. But if you get them to work, everything is better. Or at least, seems more real and correct.

Though, it takes skill not to make an overly complex collision when a simple one will do. Pilot interaction is when you need nice complex ones.

Once I learn to model my main priority will be to redesign the ISDF buildings, then the vehicles, so that the scale is more correct and they're more detailed. These things shouldn't have just one room inside.

[TheJamsh]

Most of that detail your talking about can be added with decent textures. Granted they all need a few more polygons before texture become useful though. Doesn't matter how much detail you add to a flat texture, its not going to add any depth or interest to a wall.

Really, you want a high-resolution mesh to texture on (say, 1,000,000 polygons?), then a standard resolution mesh with this hi-res texture applied.

[mrtwosheds]

(say, 1,000,000 polygons?),

This is battlezone, a game where you might build a hundred units in a large animated base and try to look at them all at the same time. At the moment, for the first time in its history, you can actually do that without reducing it to a slide show.  If you really want it to run very badly again, stick some pointlessly over complex models into it. 1,000,000 polys will make no better a model than 1000.
Aim for 250 per building.  

Bz2 does not do that cool smoothing thing your modeling program does, you would see 1,000,000 tiny flat faces.

[AHadley]

Wrong kind of detail, Jamsh. Interior detail. One room with a console just doesn't do it for me.

You'll see what I mean with LOOT:Base.

[TheJamsh]

I dont mean USE the 1,000,000 polygon mesh, but you can use it to create a ridiculously detailed texture, then reduce the model to around 2500 polys (or less, whatevers your poison), and apply the high-res texture you made on the high polygon model. I think thats the way its done these days...