Progress Shots

I have a few more shots of buildings for the Labyrinth Construction Set.

The dome gave me quite a bit of trouble. It won't light map properly, and crashed the exporter when I tried to port it to DIF for Torque. So it's one model that won't be making it's way into the TGE version.

Room II

I've completed the second of the hub/special/accent rooms for the Labyrinth Level Construction Set, shown here in all it's glitchy light mapped glory! (click image to zoom).

This room is ~8k polys with 80+ light maps (It's OK, they are small and can be ripped if you don't like them). This is why there will only be a few of these rooms included with the set. Most of the sets other components run in the 100 to 200 poly range. Faulty light mapping is responsible for the hard shadow areas at certain points where the brush cubes join. If you can get past those though, I think it's a nice scene.

This is a bare room, the developer can decorate it with additional items included in the set.

This particular room features 10 access points, any of which can be blocked off or made to lead somewhere else. Passage ways run under the mezzanine on each side of the room.

Onto Room III!

Starting now on some of the larger "plaza" or hub rooms of the Labyrinth Level Construction Set now. (click image for zoom). The export attempts to the Torque Game Engine failed. It seems TGE can't handle some of the brushes. This is not uncommon for large or complex MAP format models being ported to TGE, it usually chokes on something. Normally at this point I would delete all the offending brushes and reconstruct them, but Instead I've decided to back burner the TGE release and focus on the RC and Collada versions.

This screenshot was taken inside the renderer and uses light maps. The Realm Crafter version should look similar in game, the TGE version will be much brighter due to the way TGE renders lighting.

Below is a renderer shot of what some pieces of the set looks like exploded. To create a unique continuous level, the developer would push all these components together. Open doorways can be blocked off with wall pieces or rooms with no exit. Separate doorway components can be used to link 2 components without a door unit and still give a little room for error so that the two components don't have to exactly match up. Keep in mind that this set was not intended to be viewed from the outside.

Labyrinth in TGE 1.5.2

The TGE tests were a little bit disappointing. While at least the engine didn't crash on relight (as it has in the past with other models exported with lights), TGE exaggerated the lights providing too much bloom and making the wall textures go flat. It outright ignored anything that was not a point light. The latter I'll blame on the exporter and not Torque.

Here is a shot taken at the models true scale...


You will probably need to Zoom (click on pic) to see the Torque Orc clearly. These should probably be scaled down by half. If I get motivated enough, I MAY try passing them through Constructor and doing the lighting and scale there.

I find it ironic that Realm Crafter can display the models properly but TGE does not.

Also in this shot you can see the new door construction. I didn't like the way the old door geometry "cluttered" at the joins, so I created a separate door piece that can be placed between components to connect them. To speed up the placing process, I pre-set them into all the doorways on connector components such as the room depicted above.