Project DescriptionAn XNA 4.0 testbed/sample for interactive terrain deformation and custom particle system components, within the SunBurn Game Engine.
Specifically, this sample will feature a user controlled excavation tool for digging into deformable terrain surfaces, with associated side-effects like particle system dust clouds. It uses the commercial Indie version of Synapse Gaming's excellent
SunBurn engine for rendering, lighting and the dynamic terrain, and will use
BEPU for other physics-based digging side-effects (i.e. falling rock debris).
This sample targets Windows, but may also be of some interest to Xbox and Windows Phone developers.
To check out the current runtime build, click the green Download button. This will launch the ClickOnce installer for the binary. To check out the source code, click the Source Code tab.
Techniques shown in current build:
- Camera: Free-flying first person camera
- Custom Effects: Static mesh-based terrain using blended multi-texture shader.
- Particles: Custom particle system component (configurable in real-time within SunBurn editor).
- Deformable Mesh: Updating custom heightmap-based terrain at runtime (i.e. terrain deformation).
- Picking: Triangle-accurate mesh-picking (without introducing a custom model processor).
Requirements to build the current source code:
Concept Sketches
Here are some images that show the major components of the planned terrain deformation sample.
Example of digging action:
Example of a digging agent:
Example of a deformable terrain - a quarry:
Terrain
Here are the elements that make up the terrain.
The terrain with debugging textures shown.
Terrain with standard textures.
Static terrain mesh, with a SunBurn dynamic terrain hill peeking out.
Final terrain-deformation approach using a custom mesh patch (implemented as a custom scene type).