An idea with merit?

Ok - I simply haven't the time (and I don't think my math's up to it either) to implement this idea - but I think it's got merit.

Seems to me there's a bundle of 'worldeditors' that allow you to texture and mold landforms effectively and position meshes. But I've yet to see one that also allows you to lay down roading.

As an example. Suppose you create/load your landform mesh. Perhaps you also place meshes such as office blocks/skyscrapers etc..

You then place a number of nodes, specify road curvature, road mesh complexity, road profile, road textures, side barriers, streetlights. You hit 'GO' and the app builds the road mesh along the vector path defined by your nodes - with reference to terrain height/slope and adding cuttings and embankments to your landform as well as needed.

Then, when it's time to export, you could choose to export the road mesh and landform as one or break the road mesh into workable chunks.

And you call it, wait for it... 'The Roadie'.

What do you think?

I think you need to work on the name a bit more.

One of the biggest issues I came accross when doing this was that landscape meshes and road meshes quite often don't align well to accurate single precision floating point numbers and you get somewhat obvious and not very pretty seams along the edges.

Yeah, the name needs work. Climax studios used a similar tool for creating tracks in MotoGP. They called it "B*st@rd Love Child".

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020626/hargreaves_01.htm

:)

I'm planning on adding a very similar feature to the Naked War engine (for future titles).

I wanted to implement that exact function in Total Terrain 2 - I'm still thinking of upgrading to Total Terrain 3 if I get the time and inclination.

Well the name can be whatever.

But I reckon a professional road building app that could be used to create roading for both flat and mountainous terrain, as well as city scenes and with a number of different export options would have uses beyond Blitz3d - in other words if it was well done, pro3d designers might have an interest.