Modular Level Loader

There is a huge work in progress feature, which is called Modular Level Loader. The idea is to load the level modules from Tiled files instead of prebuilt glTF files. The feature has some milestones and smaller related features, which improves the project in various ways.

Tiled Parser Debug Info

The first milestone is tiled parser debug info improvement. The Tiled parser is used to parse the Tiled files, load the level modules from Blender files, put those modules together in the way that is was defined in Tiled file and then export the resulting level into glTF file. The parser has some debug info about collision object generation and Occlusion Culling (OC is not used atm).

The source Tiled project:

The initial version of debug info was made using simple ASCII-art like symbols. This is the level 1. The numbers represents combined collision objects for the parts of the floor and ceiling.

Level 2.

This is the floor collision object, which is marked by numbers 6 on the 2nd level floor. You can find it after the following text: COLLISIONS: FINAL FLOOR, Z: 6.

It was difficult to read those text characters, so I have replaced them with an ASCII-art graphics symbols as the first step. The resulting collision objects remained the same, so the output was skipped. This is the output of the both levels 1 and 2.

Later I have implemented nav point generation system and made an output of the nav points and links between them. The nav points are needed for later AI navigation improvements.

The next step was to replace the text files with images. This is the output of the collision objects. Now I have used the color map (instead of numbers) to the separate floor and ceiling collision objects.

Occlusion Culling info. The color map is used to mark the rooms, which are separated with walls (red) and connected with portals (green). The portal-based OC system is not implemented in current version of the game, so this info is not used atm.

The output of the nav points (green pixel-size dots) and links (white lines).

Nav points in the game.

Roadmap

The idea is to integrate the Tiled parser into the game, export the entire asset library with level modules from Blender to glTF and load the Tiled level files by the game itself. The new Tiled parser will make possible to the custom levels and load them into the game by skipping the level exporting process. It also could be possible to implement the level generation system in the future.