My feelings on the Star Wars mod.

Originally posted by Shane

Or is this something which is handled on the client side? The individual's computer keeps track of what the player should be seeing and just updates location information to the server?

Yes thats exactly the way it works as far as the avatar stuff (scenery) goes.

The collision hulls have to be the same on both the server and client so the server knows (simultanously to the client) when a collision happens. Thats why the maps need to be relativly small: to insure accuracy.

Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

This does not go well...

The determination for LOD model does not seem to be surface oriented. I set up different colors for the LOD's.

LOD0 = Blue
LOD1 = Green
LOD2 = Red

Then jumped ingame, created the object, and started moving towards it. When the sphere appeared (at 198 km from the center), it was (of course) red. I continued on but penetrated the surface (texture) without seeing a color change.

Which seems to indicate the LOD determination is performed on the distance to model origin rather than distance to model surface.

However, I was using the collision hull for the custom reactor object. Perhaps the LOD determination is based upon the player distance to collision hull (instead of avatar). Which makes sense; the engine already pulls info out of the CH file.

I figured maybe a correct-sized collision hull might change this, and set about creating a sphere collision hull. But the object won't display at all now. I've kicked the polys down way below the max limit for CH's, but can't get anything to display. All I get is the object range reads 0 meters away (always) and displays 1.$ on the HUD.

I've done this four times with the same result, each time creating a new CH with fewer polys. Two times the polys were a mix of quads and triangles. Two time the polys were all 3-point polys. Same result each time.

An Administration station CH has 216 polys. I've brought my sphere collsion hull down below 100 polys, but still it won't display. No non-planar polys. No reason why it shouldn't work.

So now I wonder if there's a limit to the size of the collision hulls.

SecondChance, could you do me a huge favor? Could you make a sphere 80 km in radius and then set up a collision hull for it and see if it displays properly? It would ensure I'm not doing something stupid.

I've now encountered problems with creating collision hulls on two models: Spiff and the Deathstar. Smallest and largest objects (to my knowledge) to be created for EoC mods. Kinda makes me wonder...

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Update: I'm playing around with the CH's. A collision hull (sphere) 40 kilometers radius won't display. Same error as before.

But a collision hull 10 km radius works just fine.

I'll keep narrowing down until I find the approx. breakpoint. Perhaps that will offer some clues.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

I would definitely suggest just creating your own scripted LoD system. You might as well if you're going to have pog handle the culling.

The ds is a very large model, so it would very much be useful to have sectioned off LoD models that are docked together as MajorTom suggested. Only the section you are closest to (and those right next to it) would be higher detailed. Having the ds in sections would probably also help greatly with collision hulls because you would have the hull split into multiple models.

So now I wonder if there's a limit to the size of the collision hulls.

Have you tried it as a class icInertSim? (then you can set the mass in the ini)

Maybe it is a mass issue? You could try Sim.SetMass and if that don't work re-set the ObjectProperty "mass" (followed by iShip.RecalculateMOIFromMass( hship ship ); (but then iShip.Cast night ruin the whole job

I'm pretty sure stars and planets have a mass too? They are a lot bigger than the DS.

What class are you using in the ini file?


Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

It looks like that's what's going to have to happen.

I created collision hulls of varying sizes. Each had the same number of polys (144). A sphere CH with a radius of 20 km will work fine. A sphere with a radius of 22.5 km will not.

There is definately an upper size limit to collision hulls.

I'll begin sectioning the model.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">