Hey guys,
I´ll try and help ya. Everyone had problems (me included) with stuff falling thru terrains when the first versions of A5 appeared. Nowadays i don´t (rather the opposite - theyre floating).

Tip1. Check so that you have the latest versions of everything, especially the Predefined WDL scripts in Template...

Tip2, The larger the terrain the more CPU power it consumes - the bigger the chance that your puter misses the instance where your character hits the terrain (box/hull). I have started to go down in polynumber and working more on textures, and placing trees and stuff to get detail up.

Tip3. Bad Coding... big problem.
I wrote my own movement scripts, and hence i got trouble. Especially since some stuff changes with every version. (My scripts had remains from early A4 days left in them.)
Check all scripts you have added. Start a new level and only add a terrain and player Move. Does it still fall thru.

Tip3.5: Check that you´re using TIME variable where it´s needed in your own coded scripts.

Tip4:
Check your models in med. The centerpoint should be placed way up in your model, not down by the feet.

Tip 5:
Check so the centerpoint doesnt move while animating. If it does you move the origin for the collision detection and that cant be good.

Tip 6:
Test your problemlevels at other users computers, to be sure it aiin´t a speed issue.
Oki...

Thats it so far. If i come to think of anything else ill post it. Good luck

Hey-

I make my height maps 2048x2048 and scale them up by around 4. As far as the vertices in MED, it depends on how drastically the elevation changes in your terrain. If I had a lot of hills and steep slopes I make sure that the triangle (polygon) size is no bigger than 30. I know that it creates more polys but I run at 45-48 FPS with it set like that. Also, you have to consider that I can make a huge outdoor level with just that one terrain so, the number of polys isn't really that high. Anyway, I would suggest that you try setting the vertices higher and see if you still fall through.

@Matthew: When you say warp are you talking about black holes and see through? If so, this can happen when the polygon size is too large.

-Jeff

Beorn,

I consider myself a fairly proficient coder, but I have just started working with terrains, and I can not detect them either.

I am using all custom scripts and I am attempting to use a TRACE command for detection. I have tried triangle sizes from 7 - 30 with no success.

Can you or anyone offer some suggestions for how to code accurate terrain detection?

Thanks!

- WildCat

Even with a poly count of 34,800 my terain looks really stupid. The edges of my race track are way too blocky and jagged...and thats at 34,000 polygons!

Wildcat,
I consider myself a hack. I´m a very disorganized coder, but i make a lot of mistake while applying brute force to my scripts. And i gladly share those
But, i remember that i had quite a lot of trouble when using my own routines. They disappeared when i gave up on the collision part and started to use scan_floor for player collision detection, so i guess i would try that and see if that works for you.

I´m currently using terrains with HUGE triangles, scaled 20 times. And i have no troubles with fall-thru.

Matthew:
Is your racetrack painted on the Terrains skin? In that case the blockiness comes from the texture being pixelated...

Do you have any screenshots?

pennewize -> may be , try this one. it solves your problem %80.
duplicate your terrain and make it invisible and place it over the other one about 96 quant or it depends on your terrain geometry.

or you can try to scale them what you want

i hope , this works now. because i am using it and it solves my problems.

Hmmm...I've finally got a good terain...and now I've got an entity to walk over it with full collision detection, but in some places, I fall through the ground. Also, When I bring a different entity (with the same player_walk action) it has no collision detection what so ever! How does face size have anything to do with colision detection...is it because the engine uses height above verticies? If so, why can't the engine calculate height above faces (or height above a particular texture map?).

If collision detection is effected by face size, then it would be imposible to make a large outdoor level in 3d gamestudio > which is why I origionally bought the program

I don't think 3d game studio is capable of making good terains without jagged faces. Is there a HMP export plugin avaliable for 3d studio max?

yes, i think , Conitec is improving terrain collisino. may be, in A5 or A6 they will correct this bugs. And lots of bugs occured by polygon size. How polgon size are big, they are so jagged.

in A5 or A6 if thyer add CLOD or DLOD , we can easily create huge outdoor levels. but for now, we must wait and see