Dungeon Builder 1.0 and OpenZone 4.1

Windcatcher · #1 07-10-2004, 05:36 PM

Here are a couple more goodies for you zone-builders:

Dungeon Builder 1.0

I've been working on this program for just over a month, and development progressed far more quickly than I had anticipated. It is a program designed to fill in one of OpenZone's major weaknesses: Dungeon Builder, as its name imples, is specifically designed to help you create dungeon zones.

Dungeon Builder is meant to be used in conjunction with OpenZone (though it technically isn't tied to EQ in particular). The idea is to use Dungeon Builder to assemble dungeon rooms and corridors, export the dungeon to a 3D Studio Max (.3DS) file, and then import that file with OpenZone 4.1. Then you should use OpenZone to add the finishing touches to your dungeon.

I've done my best to make Dungeon Builder easy to learn and use, and I'm pretty confident that you'll find that building dungeons is *dead easy* with this program. The central concept in Dungeon Builder is "drag-and-snap": you drop in corridors and rooms and drag their handles until they snap together. Dungeon Builder is smart enough to maintain connections, so, for instance, if you drag a corridor until it snaps against a room then moving the room will also move the end of the corridor so they stay connected.

Here's a quick list of features in Dungeon Builder:
- ten levels of undo and redo
- tip-of-the-day
- many different kinds of handles for manipulating rooms and corridors, and the ability to turn any of them on or off
- isometric view of your dungeon with view switchable between looking northwest and looking northeast
- overview of your entire dungeon that is visible at all times. You can click on it to instantly change the area you're working on
- ability to set all ceiling, wall, and floor textures for the entire dungeon all at once
- "dungeon walkthrough" mode where you can walk through your dungeon and change the texture of any ceiling, wall, or floor you're facing. Walkthrough mode knows about collisions and won't let you walk through walls
- automatic "cutting out" of any parts of walls where you've made objects intersect.
- automatically adds landings where corridors ascend or descend to avoid "twisting" of ceilings and floors
- displayed grid with optional snap-to-grid
- online help with context-sensitive help for sub-windows. USE THE ONLINE HELP!!!

I'm really anxious to get some feedback on this, so I'd really appreciate it if people could try it out and post here to let me know what you think. The program is pretty mature at this point, but there's always room for improvement, of course.

OpenZone 4.1

This is another bugfix release and is necessary for those of you who want to use Dungeon Builder to make dungeon zones. It has further improvements to the .3DS import code, as well as some minor cosmetic improvements to the main menu. Anyone who is making zones in other 3D tools should also download this version, since it is the first version that will make use of your texture coordinates.

Enjoy,

WC

sotonin · #2 07-10-2004, 06:23 PM

is there a download link somewhere on this post cause i cant find it.

Windcatcher · #3 07-10-2004, 06:30 PM

Sorry about that...I found a couple of small bugs so I took the download down. I've got all but one fixed and I'm working on that right now. It shouldn't be too long...

WC

Windcatcher · #4 07-10-2004, 07:15 PM

Okay, it's up now. All problems should be fixed.

WC

KhaN · #5 07-10-2004, 10:38 PM

Quote:

since it is the first version that will make use of your texture coordinates.

!!!! This is a damn news

Dungeon Builder link look like broken ... argh, i want to test this bad boy :(

Windcatcher · #6 07-11-2004, 02:52 AM

The link's good. I just downloaded and unzipped it. Try this one:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/e...0.zip?download

WC

KhaN · #7 07-11-2004, 02:55 AM

Hi,

I have 2 major problems with OpenZone.
1. When i save a zone with openZone (.scn), my zones isnt saved, file got a size, but when i reopen it with OpenZone, no mesh, no objects, all clear (I created ground mesh by importing 3DS).
2. When i import a 3DS, and export it as a mesh, i can view my mesh in OpenZone library. But if i close OpenZone and browse library to view the mesh i imported, i got an error (List index out of bounds (0).

Thanks in advance.

Windcatcher · #8 07-11-2004, 03:03 AM

Hmm... I just did both and I had no problems...

When you import the .3DS are you using "Import 3ds" or "import 3ds ground mesh"? I did the former.

If you want to export your 3ds data to a mesh and importing the 3ds gasve you more than one object, make sure to group them all first and then export the grouped object.

Make sure that your textures are all present. Maybe you had a missing texture?

WC

Edit: I just did it again with a corridor with an unassigned texture and still had no problems.

KhaN · #9 07-11-2004, 03:13 AM

Quote:

When you import the .3DS are you using "Import 3ds" or "import 3ds ground mesh"?

Actually, 3DS ground mesh, since its a ground mesh ... If i import it as a 3DS, its not considered as ground and i cant apply texture on it.

For Mesh, its one object multi textured (On object with textures applyed on each face). When object is imported into OpenZone, no textures problem, all is ok, when i export it as mesh, and then go see it in library, all is ok, problem start when i close OpenZone, ReOpen it, objects isnt visible and error crash.
When i make a zone, import all objects in (as 3DS), and launch EQ, all objects works, problem is to add them into "mesh library".

Windcatcher · #10 07-11-2004, 03:34 AM

I tried that and I still had no problems...I must not be doing what you're doing. Can you post an example of something that's giving OZ problems?

As a side note, you really shouldn't put ground meshes into the MSH library anyway since when they're put into EQ zones they won't be part of the zone geometry, and the client has a low limit of how many polygons can be in a placeable object (somewhere around 2000 polygons). Ground meshes placed from the MSH library basically won't work ingame.

WC

KhaN · #11 07-11-2004, 04:30 AM

When i import this object (a tree), model is ok under OZ, textures are ok. I click export as mesh, give random name. I go under mesh library to check if all is ok, my tree is correctly showed. I close OZ, restart, i go under mesh library to check and i got error.
I have actually around 6000 objects from house to potion and i can say you that importing everytime a 3DS is ... boooorrrinnng ... :(
Tree (Mesh+Textures)
Multi-textured mesh
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/coregn/GENTRE01.rar

When i import this mesh (poly) under OZ, all is ok, if i want to save it as SCN, it "look like to work", as file exist and is 0 octets, but when i open the SCN i saved, its empty. I tried to edit properties, nothing, i cant seem to save a zone.
Zone (Test)
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/coregn/TSTZONE01.rar

Quote:

As a side note, you really shouldn't put ground meshes into the MSH library anyway since when they're put into EQ zones they won't be part of the zone geometry

Never tried to add a zone mesh to MSH library, never tested since atm, i cant add a simple object.

Quote:

And the client has a low limit of how many polygons can be in a placeable object (somewhere around 2000 polygons)

This is good to know, thanks for the info.

Armanthuz · #12 07-11-2004, 06:17 AM

Just wanted to say thanks to windcatcher, ive been browsing here a long time as well as running my own server off/on and i appreciate the time/effort you put into this stuff!

Shadow-Wolf · #13 07-11-2004, 08:56 AM

Hmm dungeon builder seems interesting but when i try to use textures i get a stream error.

Shadow-Wolf · #14 07-11-2004, 10:12 AM

ok one confusing thing though, how do i move objects up and down? i noticed your test dungeon goes down but i cant get mine to.

Windcatcher · #15 07-11-2004, 10:21 AM

Hmmm...I'm having *no* problems with those meshes...

For the tree, I extracted the rar contents to a folder and then copied the .BMP textures to my library\textures folder under my OpenZone folder. Then I started OpenZone and clicked File...Import .3DS. It imported okay, so I then clicked Object...Export as mesh and called the new mesh "GenTree". I checked the mesh and it looked ok. I closed OpenZone and reopened it and looked at the mesh "GenTree". It looks fine. The file size of GenTree.msh is 189,585 bytes.

For the zone mesh I clicked File...Import .3DS ground mesh. It imported okay and I saved the scene as "importtest". It saved okay and when I closed OpenZone and restarted it importtest.scn loaded fine. The file size of importtest.scn is 10,895 bytes.

I'm using OpenZone 4.1.

WC