Hey everyone.

I am starting my level editor (again) and i desided to dump the BSPs to be able to create a larger outdoor worlds, and for other reasons, so now i have a question. Is it smart to still use brushes to create the world? (use of prefabs will also be allowed) but is it generally a good idea? I think that using brushes simplifies the creation of maps, a lot, and it is very flexible. I will also allow deformation of brushes (moving it's vertices and faces) which should allow for an even more flexible editor. Overall, i plan to use octrees for space partitioning, i also plan to utilize specular and bumped surfaces (just like HL2) which might be a little slow, without a thorough face culling, yet i dont think it should pose as a problem.

What do u guys think of the idea? I dont want to start knowing that i might as well fail, so im asking a more of a conceptual question.

Thanks!
Tim

Brushes as in CSG ? Wouldn't do that for large outdoor worlds.
Basicly let other apps do what they do well - let artists use Max, Maya or whatever for modelling, these apps are made for it and artists will know how to use them.

And face culling ?
I hope you're not going to cull individual polygons ?
Just culling or drawing entire objects is much faster than individually culling faces on the cpu..

Imho all a game-editor (!) should do is let people place game-objects (Meshes with collision-hull, triggers, whatever).
After all, other companies have been working on modelling-apps for decades - I doubt that you'll be able to write something better on your own.

But that's just my $0.02

I thought about that too, but when i release my engine i plan for it to be an authoring system for games, so that not just a dedicated artist can use the program. I wanted simple people (the ones that cant afford or dont want to buy a larger modeling package) to be able to create maps. For the outdoor worlds i moslty planned something like terrains, and no compilation step, where everything is a polygon soup. Brushes would be whatever would make up world geometry (such as buildings no?) and the rest are entities.

Wouldnt that be ok?


Regards,
Tim

Instead of talking about "brushes", talk about "instances", since that's what this is :)
Lots of games use it, Morrowind and Dungeon Siege comes to mind.

But i see instances as prefabs, brushes u can scale, and move vertices. That's different from instancing...

Regards,
Tim

Did you already consider that there are very many poly-based modelling tools available for free or as low-cost solutions ?

See blender or milkshape as examples (creating static meshes for instancing), or gimp (for texturing).

Cheers,
- Wernaeh

You could take a two step approach..
You could have a level editor with which you can make a rough outline of a building (and use prefabs and what not, also meshes for details)
and then have a world editor to place the buildings, edit the terrain etc.

Personally i think brush based level editors are still better to quickly make a rough outline of a level.. Maya/Max etc are better for high detail meshes.