Senin, 02 September 2013

Unity Voxel Tutorial Part 4: Destroying and placing blocks


Now that we have semi realistic terrain we need to be able to manipulate the terrain in real time because that's kind of a staple of these kinds of games or even the point of these kinds of games. The difficulty of this mostly comes down to converting floating point positions from unity to coordinates in our grid array. Our grid array is offset by a little so we need to figure out these offsets. We could also adjust our block generation to align it better to the real positions but this solution is easier.

What we'll start off with is a raycasting script to destroy blocks. Make a new script and call it "RaycastExample". Give it the following variables:
public GameObject terrain;
private PolygonGenerator tScript;
public GameObject target;
private LayerMask layerMask = (1 << 0);

The terrain GameObject will refer to the object with the "PolygonGenerator" script and in the start function we'll get the polygon generator script and save it as the tScript variable:

void Start () {
tScript=terrain.GetComponent("PolygonGenerator") as PolygonGenerator;
}

Now in the update function we'll raycast every frame from this object to the target object destroying the first block hit.
void Update () {

RaycastHit hit;

float distance=Vector3.Distance(transform.position,target.transform.position);

if( Physics.Raycast(transform.position, (target.transform.position -
transform.position).normalized, out hit, distance , layerMask)){

Debug.DrawLine(transform.position,hit.point,Color.red);


} else {
Debug.DrawLine(transform.position,target.transform.position,Color.blue);
}
}

If you haven't used raycasts before I won't go into the basics here but essentially it's the origin of the ray, the direction that we calculate using the origin and the target location, the variable we'll output the hit data to, the max distance of the ray which is calculated earlier as the distance between origin and target, and lastly the layer mask which is which layers this ray collides with. The layermask we've already defined in the start, it's set to 0 which is the default layer. This way you could have characters or entities on another layer and not have them stop the raycasts.

Add the script to a gameobject and create another gameobject to set as the target, make sure they are both at 10 z. Also set the raycaster's terrain variable to the gameobject containing the polygon generator.

If you run it now you should see a line drawn in red to the hit point if it collides and a blue line to the target if not.

The raycast hitting the terrain.
Now we'll use the location of the hit to figure out which block it is. So create a vector2 with the hit.point's x and y and then add the inverse of the hit's x and y normals. What this does is that it gives use the hit location and then moves it further into the block using the normals.
 if( Physics.Raycast(transform.position, (target.transform.position -
transform.position).normalized, out hit, distance , layerMask)){

Debug.DrawLine(transform.position,hit.point,Color.red);

Vector2 point= new Vector2(hit.point.x, hit.point.y); //Add this line
point+=(new Vector2(hit.normal.x,hit.normal.y))*-0.5f; //And this line

} else {
Debug.DrawLine(transform.position,target.transform.position,Color.blue);
}
}
What these lines do is that they take the position of the collision (hit.point) and create a new vector2 with the position, then we add to that Vector2 half of the reverse of the normal of the surface hit. The normal is the direction that would point straight away from the surface, so adding the reverse takes us 1 unit further into the block but half that takes us half a unit further in where we can round to the position of the block.

You won't see this but this is a visualization of the raycast to the hitpoint and then a line to the new point with the inverse normals added, you can see that it now ends up inside the block.
Now we'll set the block at this point to air:
tScript.blocks[Mathf.RoundToInt(point.x-.5f),Mathf.RoundToInt(point.y+.5f)]=0;

This goes after the vector2 point is defined and adjusted. It rounds the point's x and y to ints to that we can use them to choose points in the array. First though you have to subtract .5f from x and add .5f from y because of the terrain's offset from the world coordinates. You wouldn't need this if block 0,0's center was at 0,0 but it isn't.

Now to update the blocks but instead of just rebuilding and updating the mesh remotely we'll use the polygon generator's update to let it do it. Go back to the polygon generator and add a public bool called update.

public bool update=false;

Then create an Update function for the polygon generator. In the Update loop add this:
void Update(){
if(update){
BuildMesh();
UpdateMesh();
update=false;
}
}

This way we can set update to true remotely and the mesh will update but the best part is that even if several scripts change blocks they will and just change update to true but the mesh will only update once for all of them when its Update loop runs.

So set update to true for our polygon generator from the raycast script:
tScript.update=true;

The raycast should destroy one block per frame until it reaches it's target.
Sweet, now we have lasers. You could easily convert this to a part of a player script to run once and destry the block for example in front of the player.

Now that's not all though, sometimes you don't want to destroy a block at a specific point, you want to destroy all the blocks in a general area. For this we'll make a new script "ColliderExample". Give it the following variables:
public GameObject terrain;
private PolygonGenerator tScript;
public int size=4;
public bool circular=false;

And we'll use the same start code to get the Polygon Generator script
void Start () {
tScript=terrain.GetComponent("PolygonGenerator") as PolygonGenerator;
}
Because this is going to be removing a lot of blocks at once we'll make a RemoveBlock function:

bool RemoveBlock(float offsetX, float offsetY){
int x =Mathf.RoundToInt(transform.position.x+offsetX);
int y=Mathf.RoundToInt(transform.position.y+1f+offsetY);

if(x<tScript.blocks.GetLength(0) && y<tScript.blocks.GetLength(1) && x>=0 && y>=0){

if(tScript.blocks[x,y]!=0){
tScript.blocks[x,y]=0;
return true;
}
}
return false;
}

What we do here is very similar to the last remove block code we wrote only this time we also check first to see if the block is within the bounds of the array (in case our object is placed close to the edge). Then if the block isn't already air we just set the block to zero and return true to let the script that calls it know that a change was made.

Now in the update loop we'll run the remove block script for all the blocks in an area. I'll just paste in the whole chunk:
void Update () {


bool collision=false;
for(int x=0;x<size;x++){
for(int y=0;y<size;y++){
if(circular){

if(Vector2.Distance(new Vector2(x-(size/2),
y-(size/2)),Vector2.zero)<=(size/3)){

if(RemoveBlock(x-(size/2),y-(size/2))){

collision=true;
}

}
} else {

if(RemoveBlock(x-(size/2),y-(size/2))){

collision=true;
}
}

}
}
if( collision){
tScript.update=true;

}

}

So we run this for each block in a square of size by size, if the circular bool is true then first we check to see if the distance from the origin is smaller than one third the size to create a circular effect. Originally I used half the size consistent with everything else but I found that at low values some sides would be cut off so when set to circular the blast radius is smaller that otherwise. Then for both the circular and noncircular parts we remove the block at that point subtracting half the size (Because otherwise the object would be in the top left of the blast, this offsets it to the center) if the remove block function returns true we set the collision we defined earlier to true. After the loops if anything set collision to true we update the polygon generator, this way we don't update the mesh if nothing was removed.

Apply the script to a gameobject and you can do this.
Now you have both area and specific point block removers. You could even combine them and do this:

For explosive effects
Now I also promised creating blocks, this will work exactly like the raycast code. Make a new script called BlockPlaceExample and copy the contents of the raycast example there but replace the name with BlockPlaceExample.

Now all you have to change is instead of multiplying the normals that you add to the hit point by -0.5f you just multiply by 0.5f to get the block next to the block hit. And instead of setting it to air you set it to whatever you want. For example:


point+=(new Vector2(hit.normal.x,hit.normal.y))*0.5f;

tScript.blocks[Mathf.RoundToInt(point.x-.5f),Mathf.RoundToInt(point.y+.5f)]=1;


And instead of destroying a block every frame you will build one.

It looks kind of freaky.
Now instead of running it every frame you could run it once and instead of using a target just shoot it one meter to the left or right of the player and place a block!

And that's part 4, message me with any problems you find or feedback you think of. Follow me on twitter (@STV_Alex) or G+ to get updated when I post part five!

Completed code for the tutorial so far: http://netbook-game.blogspot.no/p/part-4-complete-code.html

Part 5
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Unity Voxel Tutorial Part 3: Perlin noise for terrain


Welcome to part three of the voxel tutorial. We'll be setting up the 2d game with some perlin noise to give the terrain some shape.
We'll get started by using perlin noise to create some varied terrain and caves from our blocks. Start by increasing the size of the block array to 96x128 so that we have some more room to work with. This is defined in the GenTerrain function. Also take away the old code that we used to generate terrain, the one that gave us 5 rows of blocks.

void GenTerrain(){
blocks=new byte[96,128];

for(int px=0;px<blocks.GetLength(0);px++){

for(int py=0;py<blocks.GetLength(1);py++){

}
}
}

To use perlin noise I like to use a separate function to call the Mathf.PerlinNoise unity function so that I can include things like scale and apply exponents with the parameters of my function. Here's that function:
int Noise (int x, int y, float scale, float mag, float exp){

return (int) (Mathf.Pow ((Mathf.PerlinNoise(x/scale,y/scale)*mag),(exp) ));

}

Perlin noise is an algorithm created by Ken Perlin to create gradient noise. Other people can explain it much better than me: This is a good source. But all you really need to know is that it returns values between 1 and 0 based on the values you enter. It can be used for numbers of dimentions far beyond what we need but the Unity function only takes two. For now that will be fine because this example is 2d.

What the function above does is it takes coordinates for x and y to sample for noise, then it calls the perlin noise function with those divided by scale. Because perlin noise isn't random but bases itself on the coordinates supplied then the closer those coordinates are to each other the more similar the values it returns. So when we divide the coordinates by a number they end up as smaller numbers closer to each other. (1,0) and (2,0) might return 0.5 and 0.3 respectively but if we divide them by two calling perlin noise for (0.5,0) and (1,0) instead the numbers might be 0.4 and 0.5. This will be more clear once we apply it to the terrain.

Then we take the value we get from perlin noise and multiply it by the magnitude "mag" because perlin noise returns a value between 0 and 1 and we are going to want noise that creates hills that vary in height by larger sizes like between 0 and 10. Then we take the result and put it to the power of the exponent "exp". This is useful for mountains and things. Lastly we convert the float returned into an int.

We'll apply this to the GenTerrain function column by column. By getting a number for perlin noise in the first loop (for each x) and then using that number in the y loop as the height of the terrain:

void GenTerrain(){
blocks=new byte[96,128];

for(int px=0;px<blocks.GetLength(0);px++){
int stone= Noise(px,0, 80,15,1);
stone+= Noise(px,0, 50,30,1);
stone+= Noise(px,0, 10,10,1);
stone+=75;

int dirt = Noise(px,0, 100,35,1);
dirt+= Noise(px,0, 50,30,1);
dirt+=75;

for(int py=0;py<blocks.GetLength(1);py++){
if(py<stone){
blocks[px, py]=1;


} else if(py<dirt) {
blocks[px,py]=2;
}


}
}
}


We create a stone int and a dirt int and using a few layers of perlin noise they get more textured values. Because this is essentially a 1d heightmap we only need x and the y variable can be used just to sample from a different area to make sure the results aren't the same. You can see the stone is three noise layers with different values.

Layer 1:
int stone= Noise(px,0, 80,15,1);

Layer one has a scale of 80 making it quite smooth with large rolling hills, the magnitude is 15 so the hills are at most 15 high (but in practice they're usually around 12 at the most) and at the least 0 and the exponent is 1 so no change is applied exponentially.

Layer 2:
stone+= Noise(px,0, 50,30,1);

The next layer has a smaller scale so it's more choppy (but still quite tame) and has a larger magnitude so a higher max height. This ends up being the most prominent layer making the hills.

Layer 3:
stone+= Noise(px,0, 10,10,1);

The third layer has an even smaller scale so it's even noisier but it's magnitude is 10 so its max height is lower, it's mostly for adding some small noise to the stone to make it look more natural. Lastly we add 75 to the stone to raise it up.

The dirt layer has to be mostly higher than the stone so the magnitudes here are higher but the scales are 100 and 50 which gives us rolling hills with little noise. Again we add 75 to raise it up.

The result is a noisy stone layer with highs and lows and a smooth dirt layer on top that's usually higher than the stone layer but sometimes the stone sticks out. You could also change the y value to offset the location of the noise sample. This is applied in the y loop where we change all blocks with a y below the stone int to stone and if they're higher than the stone (else) we check if y is below the dirt in and if so change the blocks to dirt.

Stone and dirt noise.
Also with noise we will add caves and spots of dirt in the stone. Surprisingly this is simpler than the dirt and stone layers. What we do is that in the if function for creating stone to a certain height we add another two ifs for caves and dirt so if the block is made into stone check to see if it should be a cave or a dirt spot instead. Here we'll use both x and y because the noise should be 2d.

void GenTerrain(){
blocks=new byte[96,128];

for(int px=0;px<blocks.GetLength(0);px++){
int stone= Noise(px,0, 80,15,1);
stone+= Noise(px,0, 50,30,1);
stone+= Noise(px,0, 10,10,1);
stone+=75;

print(stone);

int dirt = Noise(px,0, 100f,35,1);
dirt+= Noise(px,100, 50,30,1);
dirt+=75;


for(int py=0;py<blocks.GetLength(1);py++){
if(py<stone){
blocks[px, py]=1;

//The next three lines make dirt spots in random places
if(Noise(px,py,12,16,1)>10){
blocks[px,py]=2;

}

//The next three lines remove dirt and rock to make caves in certain places
if(Noise(px,py*2,16,14,1)>10){ //Caves
blocks[px,py]=0;

}

} else if(py<dirt) {
blocks[px,py]=2;
}


}
}
}

So you see inside the stone if ( if(py<stone) ) we also have an if that compares noise with 10 so if the noise we return is larger than 10 it turns the block to dirt instead of stone. The magnitude of the noise value is 16 so it reruns a over 10 only a little of the time and the scale is fairly low so the spots are pretty small and frequent. We're using x and y here and running the if for every block so the dirt is distributed through the whole array.

After that we add caves with a similar function but we multiply y by two to stretch out the caves so they are wider than they are tall and we use a larger scale to make larger less frequent caves and the magnitude is lower to reduce the size of the caves that was increased by the scale.

Now you should get caves and dirt spots.
The caves and spots are pretty evenly distributed, I like to use y to change the scale and magnitude for both to make caves more likely and large the lower you go and the opposite for dirt spots but that's all taste. You can also use similar functions to add things like ores and things.

Thanks for reading part 3, let me know about any problems you find or feedback you think of. Follow me on twitter (@STV_Alex) or G+ to get updated when I post part four. It should be out very shortly, part three was actually going to include it but I decided to split them up, anyway in that one we'll be destroying and placing blocks!

Edit: Thanks again to Taryndactyl! Taryndactyl's post: Link

Part 4
templates-office.com Terrain Generation, Tutorial, Unity, Voxel Tut, Voxels