[MUD-Dev] 3D engines for MUDs (was: The MLI Project)

[Michael Hohensee]

J C Lawrence wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 26 Feb 1998 03:42:30 PST8PDT
> Niklas Elmqvist<d97elm at dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Chris Gray wrote:
> >> [Niklas Elmqvist:]
> >>
> 
> > In MCII, Bullfrog "solved" this problem by introducing two
> > heightmaps, one showing the altitude of the ground and the other for
> > the ceiling -- this was used in the underground levels. While this
> > could certainly work in a dungeon-like setting, I am much more in
> > favor of using a single heightmap (or possibly two if we want the
> > ceiling as well) and then do the objects on the map (trees,
> > buildings, vehicles, etc) as real 3D objects. This still leaves the
> > problem of having Quake-like areas which are entirely indoors.
> 
> Why not make the ceiling hieghtmap very high and blue, with small
> white puffy blotches?  One could even texture it with a texture map
> that changed dynamically (different base patterns) for different
> outdoor weather conditions.

Heck, why not just paste the POVRAY renderer into the system and use its 
sky-sphere object?  Dungeons are little holes in mountains (or whatever 
your dungeon is in, and view of the sky is naturally cut off.  Anywhere
that you *can* see the sky from, the sky-sphere will peek through.

I really like povray's system.  All you need is one world file, and you
can
draw any scene in the game.  Of course, it'd be a pain in the ass to
have to download the entire MUD upon login, or to have to get a CD-ROM
to
play the damn thing... Perhaps we can just send the client the
world-settings
and all objects within a certain radius of the viewer.  This would be
fairly
network-friendly, especially if the vast majority of objects are
standardized, and could therefore be sent as names and co-ordinates.

Of course, the POVRAY renderer does take time to work, and wouldn't be
suitable for real-time graphics unless there is a way to have it lower
the
quality of the rendering to a point where it took a fraction of a second
to finish.  If we're not desperate for real-time images, however, this
seems to be the logical solution.

--
Michael Hohensee       michael at mainstream.net
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/9025/
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