Win32, OpenGL and ODE Physics

FreeWorld Tutorial

By Alan Baylis 21/07/2003

Things to Note:

The textures are loaded automatically by the editor when the program starts, the program searches for any TGA images it finds in the textures folder, if you want to change the textures loaded at startup then add them to this folder before the program starts. The textures folder for the editor and the loader/viewer need to be identical for the correct images to appear when viewing the world.

With the splines and static lights you should load and have present at least one of each or the program may crash, just make them non-visible if you don't want to see them.

There is a small bug that I haven't tracked down yet that means that you can't select the build lines or static lights at the origin until at least one brush has been created, unfortunately that is my only clue as to what the problem may be, if the brush is deleted then you can select objects at the origin.

One problem is related to the removal of exterior polygons when the world is compiled. I have found that some of the exterior polygons are not being removed so this may upset the BSP process in the world loader, the workaround to this problem for now is to make sure the exterior of the world is a box shape before compiling and the easiest way to do this is to start with a solid box and carve out the rooms of the world but compiling and carving can take a lot longer due to the complexity of the brush.

When you come to export the world and you select the menu item it may take a while to respond, this happens because the program compiles the world before the save-as dialog appears, the same can also happen when carving a complex brush, it will appear as if the program has frozen, but it is working in the background. I'll have to add a progress bar with the next update.

There also appears to be more than one polygon per face left after some carves which sometimes results in the wrong polygon being rendered in the world loader.

Lastly, the world loader does not load worlds with a single room, it expects the world to partition into more than one area during the BSP process, I will fix these and any other bugs that I find before the next update.

I hope you find the editor useful, it desperately needs an undo for transformations and many other standard features, though it should be helpful if all you need is a simple world. If you have any problems or suggestions then send me an email or you can post to the message board.