has anyone ever tried making a spherical world so that you can go forever without hitting the edge?

This is out of place, put it in new to gamestudio

To answer your question I'm not sure if anyone in 3DGS did this but it is possible definately. The problem with doing this though is that you would have to define a huge world in order to do this, if you didn't you could see the curvature of the ground around you, and I don't think this is a very realistic effect.

thanks trooper. I'm not too concerned with realism inside the sphere.

If any moderators set eyes on this, please move it to the 'new to gamestudio' section, as the Trooper suggests.

In that case, what do you have in mind? Maybe I can set you along the right path on how to get started. And if your keeping it under wraps do you have any other questions?

Thank Trooper.

Basically, I have a boat, and I just need to be able to run around for pretty much ever. I've got a marina that the boat can dock at to end the game when ever they want. I figure the best way to do that is to have a sphere. Is there a way to just make a sphere of "water" with some islands on the inside and just make the boat move around on it like it's a car or something like that?

You can walk 360 on the outside or inside of a sphere or up/down walls like in prey pretty easily, here is an example.

A problem with the sphere approach is that if the sphere is too small, then the
transition between polygons will make the player model adjust somewhat abruptly
as it walks around it. You can minimize this by making a large sphere with a lot
of polygons, but this brings down the fps.

here is a demo of walking on walls / ceiling using curved ramps to smoothly transition like in the game Prey.

Sounds like a great project to start off on. From what you've told me it seems like the one piece of code you might need is the keeping your boat at the correct angle according to the world. In this I can help you out. You have a couple of options depending on what is going on in your world. If your water is unmoving and at the angle your boat should more or less be then you can simply do something like the following
Code:

---

 action boat
{
   var origionOfWorld[3] = {0,0,0};  //this is the origion of the level (or the center of your world)
   var boatPos[3];
   var sentinal = 1;

   trace_mode = ignore_me;  //ignores the boat when you look for the world surface position and angle under your boat
   while(sentinal == 1) // continues forever, unless sentinal is changed
   {
      boatPos.x = my.x;
      boatPos.y = my.y;
      boatPos.z = my.z;
      trace(boatPos, origionOfWorld);  //or use c_trace if you have A6
      my.x = target.x;
      my.y = target.y;
      my.z = target.z;   //put boat dirrectly on the surface of the water
      vec_to_angle(my.pan, normal);  
      vec_to_angle(my.roll, normal);
      vec_to_angle(my.tilt, normal);  //rotate the boat so it has the same angle as the water below it
      wait(1);
   }
} 

---

And you would add that code to whatever you wish (such as a slight bobbing rotation back and forth on your boat as it moves) along with your controls (i.e. on_w = my.x+1;) <-bad example. Of course this is only a simple code snipet and will have to be improved in order to suit your needs, tell me if this helps

@Josiah, lol that was a pretty funny little demo, thanks for the input

Quote:

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This is out of place, put it in new to gamestudio

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There is no reason to move this topic. Frankly this is something that interests me as well.

There is no reason is couldnt work, but you would have to make some basic changes to how movement and such is normally done.

Instead of gravity going down it would of course have to be a force towards the center of the sphere. And also you would have to apply a constant force to everything, not just the player. And then of course you nee to set the rotations correctly.

To really make it convincing you need to make the sky a sphere as well..and some kind of atmostphereic scatter effect would help as well.

if you have a physics engine you may try rhis one
this will work only with one sphere and one obj attached to it
entity* sphere;
var gravity_ang[3];
var temp_gravity[3];
var gravity_force=300;//try changing this

function link_to_sphere()//the link function
{
vec_set(temp,sphere.x);
vec_sub(temp,my.x);
vec_to_angle(gravity_ang.pan,temp); // set gravity angle to the center of the sphere
vec_set(temp_gravity,nullvector);
temp_gravity.x=gravity_force;
vec_rotate(temp_gravity,gravity_ang);
vec_inverse(temp_gravity);
ph_setgravity(temp_gravity);
}

action g_sphere
{
sphere=my;
}

action boat
{
phent_settype( my,PH_RIGID, PH_BOX);
phent_setmass ( my, 100,PH_BOX);
phent_setdamping(my,100,100);
phent_setfriction(my,40);//play with this values
while(1)
{
link_to_sphere();
wait(1);
}
}
i haven't tryed this code so maybe there are errors in it
2 Josiah
nice demo, can you show the script?that code is just what i looked for!

While a great idea Shadow, unless he is putting physics into his level, this is a bit over done, your doing to much than what needs to be done, if you put in calculations for gravity and things like that, that simply makes one more equation the computer has to do, while this is meaningless on the small scale, if you multiply this 100 fold with a complicated level and many entities going at once, you may lose one or two FPS. Quite simply be careful what you code, only do what needs to be done, games are insanely CPU intensive, so the more code you can take out of it the better.