Size of vanilla map & creating 3D models?

[Commoner]

This game looks pretty interesting, and there happens to be modding tools. Sorta like a low budget Bethesda game. Got a couple questions about the modding.

 

1. How many cells does the vanilla map have? The biggest you can chuck in WorldEd is 100x100, but that seems kinda big; that's 300,000x300,000.

 

Reason for asking, is that I want to give the modding workflow a run through. I went and created 10 4096x4096 lakes in World Machine 2, but there's no frame of reference for how large that is. And as far as I can tell, the vanilla map's not been released, so I can't compare through Photoshop.

 

2. Does the game use 3D models? The google search results were from 2014 and earlier, which is kinda old. The consensus was CPU skinning a horde of zombies would be terrible (it would), but there was no mention of the solution; GPU skinning, which is a wee vertex shader that runs on the GPU. If your GPU has SM 2.0 support, it ought to be able to handle it.

 

If it uses sprites for the characters, is there a guide on properly rendering weapons and clothing from 3ds Max or what have you? Google wasn't any help here either.

[Rekkie]

I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge, hopefully someone can fill in the gaps.

 

1) The stock vanilla maps (not counting the unreleased map data which Mash is working on) amount to 550 cells. WorldEd allows 10,000 cells (100x100) -- probably more of an arbitrary number, only really limited by storage size. Putting the vanilla maps at 5.5% of the maximum, and much of the world in PZ is covered by forest. Each cell is 300x300 squares, each square contains multiple layers; Then on top of that you have ~7 levels of height within the cell (300x300x7), each containing their own set of squares and layers.

 

If you want a tile reference, I'd recommend taking a look at the Tilesheet images posted EasyPickins. A single road tile, for example, is roughly 32 by 32 pixels in isometric (which fits in a space of 128x256 in the tilesheet); this is utilizing 2x tiles sizing.

 

On 27/01/2017 at 6:11 AM, EasyPickins said:

Tiles

Tileset images

 

2) Yes the game uses 3D models; Players, weapons and zombies (giblets?) with the option of using the older sprites on slower machines.

[Commoner]

7 hours ago, Rekkie said:

I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge, hopefully someone can fill in the gaps.

 

1) The stock vanilla maps (not counting the unreleased map data which Mash is working on) amount to 550 cells. WorldEd allows 10,000 cells (100x100) -- probably more of an arbitrary number, only really limited by storage size. Putting the vanilla maps at 5.5% of the maximum, and much of the world in PZ is covered by forest. Each cell is 300x300 squares, each square contains multiple layers; Then on top of that you have ~7 levels of height within the cell (300x300x7), each containing their own set of squares and layers.

 

If you want a tile reference, I'd recommend taking a look at the Tilesheet images posted EasyPickins. A single road tile, for example, is roughly 32 by 32 pixels in isometric (which fits in a space of 128x256 in the tilesheet); this is utilizing 2x tiles sizing.

 

 

 

2) Yes the game uses 3D models; Players, weapons and zombies (giblets?) with the option of using the older sprites on slower machines.

 

The vanilla map is then roughly (24 * 24) * 300 = 172,800 pixels. Hell, I could make the base map & vegetation map in World Machine @ 512 x 512. Hell yeah.

 

And thank god that it uses 3D models. That makes things way easier.

 

Much obliged man.