modifiable mesh for clothes, water, fire and IK

[daemonicky]

what i want
I want to make water which I can spill over surfaces (~ particles with distance constrains). I want oil to be burnable by fire and dousable by water. I want clothes which can be ripped by sword (~ delete joints). It plan to do it for singleplayer, maybe multiplayer ...

I want some IK. I have Jakkobsen paper about Verlet integrator and I want to try some of my ideas.

how i imagine doing it (solving it)
- I want to make water as bunch of particles, pretty much same as cloth, that is having some distance constrains ... And I want to render the triangular/rectangular mesh (net) between particles. If I was doing it directly in opengl it would do it.

- Dousing of water will most likely be some particle net 1 X particle net 2 collision. Each particle of burning water will be object, have some parameters like energy or life so if it is doused enough it will die, same for water ...

- IK. I will make simplifications, make it my swordgame specific, I really dont want some universal IK system .

- IK. I know about sagdoll, but it is great demo (joints of ragdolls are entities), I would have to rework it anyway to make it usable for me. I am not exactly sure whether I want each bone have separate models (~ Tomb Raider, Blood 2, Quake 3?) or part of mesh (~ new games). If it would be part of mesh then i probably could reuse some of this cloth stuff, which map.

illustrative screenshots of separate models for bones from Tomb Raider
http://www.dxtre3d.sakul.cz/pics/scren/fexmerger.jpg
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/tomb- ... Id,380227/
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/tomb- ... Id,380228/
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/tomb- ... Id,380240/

what i want

I want to have it as easy as possible for me to make it. So I am putting engine code modification as a last resort. Simplest and most direct I guess is Quake C.

I thought that I wrote it by entities, but that seems to me like overkill. It might not be, I dont know ... I will try it. I will need some representation of particles and I want to simulate some behaviour on them so entities would be the best choice I guess.

How to make mesh between these entities at realtime How and in which engine (...) to move bones of some model so the mesh is deformed I think, that some Quake engines, like maybe Darkplaces, migh be able to do it, either somehow directly form Quake C or trought shaders, I really have no idea how.

Thanks for help .


(I though about hack. Having mini model, "twig", "triangle" or "quad" and use it to make this mesh and transform it in Quake engine. AFAIK, from Quake C I could do only scale, rotate, translate transformations. Because I think I can't do shear, I think that I can only make models like in Blood 2 or NOLF.)

[goldenboy]

[mh]

Simplest and most direct is to not use Quake.

Let me explain. Quake is a simple - and simplistic - game from 1996. That's a very ambitious list of wants you've got there, and Quake just cannot do these things without heavy modification. You'll be constantly fighting against the limits of the formats, you'll be fighting against the limits of QC, and you'll be spending more time doing this fighting than getting anything productive done.

Yes, Quake is great in that it's easily moddable. Yes, QC is great in that all you need is a text editor and a command-line. But you've got to learn what it's good at and what it's not good at to avoid frustrations. Play it to it's strengths and when you find a weakness do something different. Because even when you're making relatively traditional Quake-style stuff there are enough significant moments of beating your head against the wall to be getting on with.

In other words I think you've chosen the wrong tool for the job.

(Edit: I should probably say that I'm not trying to be overly negative here. Ambition is certainly to be encouraged, but you need to set yourself realistic and achievable goals, especially when you're starting out and learning the capabilities of your chosen tools. Try to run before you can walk and you'll most likely smash into a wall. You're a good ideas person, and it wouldn't be nice to see you burn out from trying too much too soon.)

[daemonicky]

[daemonicky]

[goldenboy]