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The Cliff Construction Kit is a package that will help you create lightweight cliffs and overhangs in your TGEA or Torque 3D game. Currently TGEA versions 1.7.1 and 1.8.1 are supported. A Torque 3D 1.0.1 port is available as a BETA - it does not yet have its own detailed documentation, but it comes with more features than older versions. The documentation below the video applies to the TGEA versions of the Kit.

Please view the video to see how the kit can be used in your own projects. This is taken in Torque 3D 1.0.1 using Cliff Construction Kit 1.3 BETA.

Features

Replicator features

• Presets tailored to cliffs
• Use of creator textures and modifiers
• Min / max terrain slope
• Polysoup switch
• Clustering
• Exclusion of terrain surfaces - set up to 4 terrain materials
• Define up to 8 shapes for the replicator to pick from
• Define up to 8 textures for the replicator to pick from

Shapes listing

The following is a list of available shapes in the same replicated scene to give you a feel of how they'd work in your environment.

Materials listing

The following is a listing of the textures found in the Kit.

Demo environment by RRGTS

The TGEA versions of the kit include demo missions that are based on assets created by the fine folks at Really Really Good Things Studio. Hey Alan, many thanks again!

Using the World Editor Creator with the Kit

Once you launch your stronghold mission, press F11 and F4. The BG Cliffs Pack has it's own place amongst statics! – Open Static Shapes and BG Cliffs Pack to see what's in there.

Cliff Shapes

Here you find the 15 base shapes. See the Shapes listing section for images of the cliffs in the same replication. When clicking shapes, they appear in the scene instantly – just like any other object in the creator. However, with one or several cliffs and/or cliff replicators selected, you can apply textures to many shapes at the same time by opening the Cliff Textures branch, and clicking a texture. For replicators, it is possible to select up to 8 shapes, from which a replicator will choose when placing cliffs. Since it'd be very tedious to do that by entering filenames, there is a feature called Shape slots. Shape slots store the 8 shapes for a replicator. When in the creator, you can activate a slot by pressing ALT-1 .. ALT-8. Once a slot is activated, and a replicator is selected, any shape that you click on will be inserted in the active slot for the selected replicator. By default, the first slot is the active slot. To clear a slot, press ALT-BACKSPACE.

Cliff Textures

These are the skins of the cliffs. There are 40 textures that you can apply to any cliff with a click. Similarly to shape slots, there are texture slots for replicators, and they work just the same way. Here, the shortcuts are CTRL-1 .. CTRL-8 and to clear a texture slot, the default keystroke is CTRL-BACKSPACE. For both types of slots, you can see feedback upon selection and loading of shapes and textures, or clearing a slot in the console. So whenever you're in doubt about what's happening, check the last lines of the console.

Cliff Modifiers

Modifiers are presets for cliffs and cliff replicators. Currently they affect specularity, but in the future they are to include even more useful settings for the replicator – so you can load quick defaults into the replicator with a click encapsulating such complex effects as wrap terrain or create labyrinth. The replicator is still under development to be able to handle some of these advanced options, however, as a license holder, you will have the option to receive such updates at no charge. There are 6 presets for Specular Color – here called Falloff, and 7 for Specular Power – here called Strength. You can of course still modify these in the editor, and assign more extreme values to them. They will apply any changes right away.

Cliff Replicator

This is the replicator object. The role of a replicator is to create many shapes on the server side procedurally, while only sending one object – the replicator itself - to the clients, where the same procedures are used to build exactly the same shapes – with same rotation, position and scale. When you click the Cliff Replicator object in the World Editor Creator, no shape appears just yet. You need to select the replicator, open Cliff Shapes and click on a shape (while you have the cliff replicator selected in the editor). Once you choose a shape, the shape will appear on the scene with a base test texture – something very similar to GG's no material texture. While the replicator is still selected, assign a texture to it in a similar way. Now, press CTRL-2 and click another texture. You will see how texture slots work right away. Try adding a new shape in slot 2 by first selecting shape slot 2 to be the active slot by pressing ALT-2 and then clicking another shape. This system is probably a little unfamiliar at first sight, but it is a step in the direction where editing is a less tedious task.

Using accumulation on cliffs

Accumulation is a feature that was added with Update 1. The image below explains it better:

Both cliffs and replicators have a new texture slot called the accumulator texture slot. This is made active using CTRL-UP. This is generally used the same way as any other texture slot on a replicator. Cliffs now also have a shortcut to change between the material texture slot (CTRL-1) and the accumulator texture slot (CTRL-UP). Select a cliff or a replicator, press CTRL-UP and choose a texture. You will see that the texture is applied on top of the cliff(s). If you have a single cliff selected, and not a replicator, then try rotating the cliff. You will see, that the accumulated material always stays at the top of the shape.

AccuMat modifiers

With Update 1, two new modifiers were added, both are F32 values that range from 0 to 1. Depth is a pseudo-depth setting that controls how much of the original material's bump mapping is inherited by the cover (accumulation) material. This is a simple trick that tries to mimic accumulation behavior. This is referred to as accumulation in the property editor. Transparency is responsible for making the cover material less or more transparent over the cliff's material.

A cliff (tsCliffStatic)

The following is a list of the properties unique to static cliff objects only.

baseTexName This is the base name of the texture to be used on this shape. See the Materials listing secion for all the base names.
specularColor Color of the specular on the object. The darker the less visible. Note that the color of the specular also depends on the perpixel color of the specular map.
specularPower Specular power. The smaller this value the stronger the brightess is.
parentReplicatorId This value is not used and will be -1 for all cliffs that are not created by a cliff replicator.
accuTexName Name of the accumulated cover material texture. Leave this empty if you do not want to use accumulation.
accumulation Percentage of inheritance of the underlying cliff material's bump mapping. transparency Transparency setting for the accumulation material.

The cliff replicator (fxCliffReplicator)

This is a list of the unique properties of a cliff replicator.
usePolysoup Whether the shapes should have collision and static shadows.
shapeFile1..8 The 8 shape slots. These all contain base names of the cliff objects. You can use the creator to assign shapes here, but you can simply enter the name of any cliff. If the name is not valid, the slot will behave as if it was empty.
baseTexName1..8 The 8 texture slots. Again, these are editable right in the mission editor, and behave much the same way as the shapeFile fields. You can use the creator one-click texture to slot assignment feature as well.
specularColor SpecularColor setting for replicated cliffs.
specularPower SpecularPower setting for replicated cliffs.
rotationModifier This is just the same as if you were defining the same min and max rotation. This just rotates every replica by a number of degrees around each axis.
allowOnCliffs This is a complementary feature to the allowOnStatic setting. This makes it possible to place cliffs on other cliffs or only other statics. If you want to place cliffs on cliffs, allowOnStatics must also be checked!
minimumTerrainSlope Minimum slope of the terrain where a cliff can be placed.
lie Makes the cliff fall on its largest side.
flip Flips the cliff around to be lying on its other side.
normalSampleRange A range in world units in which terrain normals below the cliff are sampled in a random manner from the projected object box center. This is useful to make the cliff align to terrain better, while still preserving a little chaos.
normalSampleCount The number of times random terrain normals should be gathered for a cliff within the allowed range. The more you gather the better cliffs align to terrain. Keep in mind that with a large replica count, this number should be low – otherwise generating the replication will take a long time. Keeping it below 32 is a good idea, 16 should suffice for everything.
useClustering Shows if cliffs should band together instead of being remote and lonely.
countPerCluster Average number of cliffs in a band.
clusCountVariation Maximum change to countPerCluster.
clusterRadius Range in which the members of a band will get a position. A cluster has a position, and this range shows how far from that positions cliffs can be placed.
clusRadVariation Some clusters will have a small, some will have a larger radius. This shows the maximum amount of fluctuation.
excludeTerrainMat1..4 Base name of a terrain material where cliffs should not be placed. Just enter the base name of any blended texture that your terrain uses.
accuTexName Name of the accumulated cover material texture used on all cliffs. Leave this empty if you do not want to use accumulation.
accumulation Percentage of inheritance of the underlying cliff material's bump mapping.
transparency Transparency setting for the accumulation material.

Adding new cliff models

Model your cliff. Use only one material, and call it "base.cliff". You can use other materials, but the “base.cliff” material will be using the cliff textures. To better align texture coordinates, the base.cliff texture in the Kit can come in handy. Place your exported DTS model in the BG_CLIFFS folder that resides in scriptsAndAssets/data/shapes.

Adding new textures

Name your diffuse texture "yourname.cliff" with a .dds, .jpg or .png extension. If you can not make a dds, a png is preferred. Create a normal map and a specular map, and place them in the appropriate directories with the names "nrm/yourname.cliff_nrm" and "spc/yourname.cliff_spc" + the file extension. It is very important that these files exist along with your diffuse texture.

Future updates

Future code updates and bug fixes are provided free of charge for license owners. Extensions of a different nature - ie. new texture and model packs made to work with the BG Cliff Construction Kit is to be considered a separate product, and will be priced accordingly.

The Cliff Construction Kit will not have more updates for the Torque Game Engine Advanced. Instead, we would like to concentrate our efforts on adding more features to the Torque 3D version of the Kit in the future.