Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dr.Gonzo]

Got a total noob question; 

I tried to follow the Trinity demo to where she's behind the crates and is
"covered" by the crates as she should be.

When I try to do this in my first test scene, I get wierd results:
There is a tree in my scene, and I created a sprite entity (just like
the crates in the trinity/front scene) and placed it on top of my
rendered tree so the actor would be invisible when walking behind
the tree.

What I'm getting is this:


The guy is still visible when he's behind the tree, he's fine when he's a little in front
of it, and then he's covered by the sprite when he's closer to the camera.

Obviously, my tree-sprite isn't placed right. But how do I place it correctly?
I searched the docu and the forum but I can't find an answer on how to fix that.

Anyone, please?

(I gotta say that I feel like a total tool in this forum.. Aren't there any other beginners
here to ask stupid questions as well?? It seems like everyone else here is years ahead
of where I am right know. Is there some additional documentation around that I don't
know of and that gives all these answers to someone who is new to WME? )

[design3d]

Hi Dr.Gonzo

Another noob Q for you from me
Where is the "hot spot" of the tree sprite placed? It should be somewhere in the centre of the root of tree. I think.

Believe this is what forum for: to ask questions about things you don't get from documentation.

Off-topic: Is it ok to say "total tool" at all? Just curious in terms of colloquial speech.

[Dr.Gonzo]

Hi Dr.Gonzo

Another noob Q for you from me
Where is the "hot spot" of the tree sprite placed? It should be somewhere in the centre of the root of tree. I think.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only nOOb in here.. 

I tried moving the hot spot, but that doesn't seem to have an effect as far as
the actor appearing in front or behind a sprite goes.

...several hours later...

I finally got it to work by adding a "walk behind" region to the scene.
Why does it work know? I don't know..
Looking at the trinity demo, there is no "walk behind" region in the scene
and yet she's still partly invisible when she's behind the crates.

I swear, this is like pulling teeth without a complete documentation.. 

[Mnemonic]

It should work without the behind region, though. As design3d said, you should edit the tree sprite and move the hotspot (i.e. some kind of base point of the sprite) to the bottom part of the tree, to the point where the tree touches the ground, like this:



Then the z-sorting will work as expected (you still need at least one region in the scene, though).
If you look at wme_demo_3d, you'll see the crates sprite does the same. So does the chair in wme_demo.

I swear, this is like pulling teeth without a complete documentation.. 

Have you read the scene creation tutorial in the docs? It goes to great lengths to describe the concepts.

[design3d]

Have you read the scene creation tutorial in the docs? It goes to great lengths to describe the concepts.

Agree. I've found it very usefull to go through 2d part of documentation even when I'm gonna play only with 2.5 capabilities of the engine. Helps a lot 

[Dr.Gonzo]

Yes, I have read the documentation (so far up to the "Scripting" section) and went through the
scene tutorial.
The tutorial however is using a 2D actor and doesn't fully translate into using a 3D actor.
Regions vs a .3ds geometry etc.. So not everything involved in using a 3D actor can be
learned from the tutorial, as good as it is.

I had located the sprites hot spot at the base of the tree trunk as was suggested here,
following the crates.sprite example, and it didn't work right.

Part of the problem is that I seem to be getting inconsistant results;
I was able to get it to work using a region around the tree.
Just now I disabled this region in sceneEdit and ran the game again and it still
worked! Nice!
I went into sceneEdit again and deleted that region, ran it again and now it doesn't work!
My actor gets covered up by the sprite when he's standing well ahead of the tree.
How can that be?? Do I have to reload the project in projectManager everytime I make a
change to a scene and saving it in sceneEdit?

Is the problem the location of the tree? It's far in the back of my scene:



I appreciate your answers! 

[design3d]

Is the problem the location of the tree? It's far in the back of my scene:

Let me take a wild guess. Maybe it has something to do with z-sorting of the scene? Have you tried to look at 3d objects through "Display scene geometry" to see is camera FOV correct? Perhaps overriding exported FOV with manual one will cure the problem.
Anyway I would try that

[Mnemonic]

No no, there's no relation to the scene geometry. To recap, you need to:

1) create a scene
2) the scene has to contain at least one region, covering the walkable area
3) create a free entity "tree" and assign it a sprite which has its hot spot positioned at the bottom of the tree

[Dr.Gonzo]

Well, maybe the reason for the problem I'm having is that I'm still working
on a modified version of the 3D Trinity demo. I just gave it a new background,
geometry and actor, to get the hang of it.

I will take the plunge and try to create the whole environment by myself, from
scratch. This will take a while but I'll let you guys know how it went.

As far as my current test scene goes; it does have a walk plane and the tree
sprite is a free entity, with the hot spot at the bottom.
But since this was just a first test, I'm not to worried that it didn't quite work
as expected.

Here's my current scene with geometry; the tree.sprite, blocked region and "behind the tree" region:

[design3d]

Ok. I've proved I am nOOb 

I studied your screenshot, Dr.Gonzo. Have not noticed a "walkable area" Mnemonic mentioned though, only 3d walk plane (the biggest blue one).

[Dr.Gonzo]

As far as I can tell, a 3D walk plane will serve as a walkable area, no?

Are you working on a game right now?

 

[design3d]

Yes, 3d walk plane serves as walkable area. But it has to be covered by at least one layout region as well (in Trinity demo it is so).

For now I just study WME in spare time as hobby. And you?

[Dr.Gonzo]

Yes, 3d walk plane serves as walkable area. But it has to be covered by at least one layout region as well (in Trinity demo it is so).

Well, I think you're right!  I just tried it out and it works well. From the docu I had
gotten the impression that the 3ds geometry pretty much includes all the necessary
objects and regions. I guess I was wrong.
That's why I wish there would be a separate tutorial that deals with 3D actors in detail.
I would think that the majority of games developed with WME are using 3D actors?

For now I just study WME in spare time as hobby. And you?

I'm trying to get a game started for real. I have several ideas, but like most beginners
I guess, I'm still in shock over how difficult this really is.. 

[Mnemonic]

The process is actually quite similar for 2D and 2.5D scenes, especially now when you can use 2D pathfinding even for 3D characters. It was a design goal to make the 2.5D scenes creation as close to 2D scenes as possible.

[Dr.Gonzo]

The process is actually quite similar for 2D and 2.5D scenes, especially now when you can use 2D pathfinding even for 3D characters. It was a design goal to make the 2.5D scenes creation as close to 2D scenes as possible.

Thanks Mnemonic, that clears that part up for me.
I guess I'd gotten the wrong understanding on how 2D vs 2.5D works.