4 - Competent Buildings

[moonsense715]

Author: Westwood Studios

Skill level: 4

 

By Greg Hjelstrom

 

Buildings in Renegade are a collection of terrain meshes and static animated objects that are set up as Building Aggregates in the level editor. A logical building controller is created and placed in 3d space in the level editor. This controller collects all meshes near the building controller that have a matching prefix in their name.

 

Building Controller

Building controllers are defined and instantiated in the level editor. They can be found in the Presets tree under the top-level Buildings folder. The building controller defines the game-logic attributes of the building such as health and shield type. A key setting in the building controller is the MeshPrefix string. All meshes in the vicinity of the building controller whose names contain a prefix that matches this prefix will be tracked by the building controller for damage purposes. All BuildingAggregates in the vicinity whose names match this prefix will be animated according to the damage state of the building.

 

Exterior Meshes

Meshes that are part of the exterior of a building should be named like this:

 

 

 

<MeshPrefix> ^ <unique mesh name>

For example, an exterior mesh for the gdi weapon factory might be named mgwep^011. The ^ symbol indicates that it is an exterior mesh.

 

Interior Meshes

Meshes that are part of the interior of a building should be named like this:

 

<MeshPrefix> # <unique mesh name>

The # symbol is used to indicate that the mesh is part of the interior. Remember that all w3d mesh names must be less than 16 characters long.

 

When a bullet hits either an interior or exterior mesh of the building, damage will be applied to the logical building controller.

 

Building Aggregates

A building aggregate is a special type of animated static object (tile) that plays different segments of its animation depending on the damage state of the building controlling it. These are set up in the Tiles sub folder of the Presets tree in the level editor. The model and preset for a building aggregate should contain the mesh prefix that the building controller expects.

 

To make a tile which is a building aggregate, you create a tile and select BuildingAggregate as its physics model type.

 

There are many settings in the building aggregate that can be used to do things that the shipping version of Renegade does not currently do. For example, you can create truly destructable buildings by simply making a huge destruction animation and setting it up as a building aggregate. Have Fun!