Models for levels in A7?

Hey all. I started back up on my Trail of Blood game recently and I want to try some level designing for it. I'm making a shooter that's mostly outdoors, but has a good bit of indoor parts (usually the more important missions). I've been told various things about using models as levels in A6, mostly negative.

I'm trying to do a fairly modern shooter so I figure shaders and all that good stuff are a must. I don't really know the performence improvements of A7 so I don't know it would take this. The game takes place on a snowy mountain side with some military bases.

Also, I was wondering if it's a good idea to compine terrains model buildings.

Sorry if this has been answered, I ran several searches on this and couldn't find anything. I also haven't done any serious level design in years so I really don't know too much about it I took the route of modeling and scripting.

for shaders, models are definitely the way to go. level geometry sucks. maybe a7 handles WED blocks differently now, and it's better, but i wouldn't know.

there shouldn't be any problems combining terrains and model buildings. the polygon-flag is your friend

personally, i'd use models for terrains (not easy in MED, but for example blender's retopo tool and a subdivide should assist) because they can make more accurate representations of the terrain curves with fewer polies (a curved plateau made out of a .hmp looks awful without having a relatively high polycount).

that's all i've got

hope it's helpful

julz

Been mucking around with terrain and models only and most times it works great then somewhere along the line with no editing at all, the whole lot craps out and 3 months goes down the drain again!

The nasty this time is the camera.

Somehow it is conflicting with stencil shadows and laggs as if it is so poly souped up that I wonder whats the point of continuing, (FPS count stay good though).

Throw away poly collision though and you are screaming.

So it works well but be prepared to do a lot of work if your going for per poly collision results, then you have to get into sub-scene managment with an awesome amount of LODs to make.

Hey thanks for the info! Sounds like it's a hassle to use models as levels, but if the end result is a better looking game I think it might be worth it.

lol The decision to use blocks or models is so hard, especially to a novice level designer. I guess I'll just give it a try and see what my results are.