Building with Terrain

Modifying terrain with Demeter is easy!  All of the actual setting of terrain is accomplished by the application itself based on "terrain markers" placed throughout the world.  Currently, the model of the terrain marker is "terrain.rwx."

Figure 1: A terrain.rwx marker.

The terrain.rwx marker is simply a plane that covers an entire cell, or the size of a walk029h.rwx.  Included are four gridlines for easy positioning, and a yellow cube to facilitate selection of the object when the object is hidden in a valley.

Demeter differs from the Activeworlds browser in that the terrain markers are placed at the intersections of the cells, which are actually the elevation points instead of the world.  In the browser's terrain editor, the elevation points are at the southeast corners of each cell.  The red quadrant of the marker signifies in which direction the texture placed on this particular object will apply, and is always to the northwest of the elevation points.

Terrain textures are modified by the contents of the description fields of the markers.

Figure 2: A terrain.rwx object with the description field set correctly.

The Object Properties dialog above demonstrates a terrain.rwx object where the description field is set appropriately.  The first number in the dialog box signifies which terrain texture to use, from zero to 62.  The second number, separated by a comma from the first, is either zero, 90, 180, or 270, for the rotation of the texture in the current cell.  To create a hole to the northwest of this elevation point, simply enter the word "hole" in the description field.

Terrain objects can be left-clicked after closing the Object Properties dialog in order to hide them so that they are invisible.

World owners should supply the textures for their worlds.  Terrain textures with "transitions" between different landscapes are most effective, to avoid a "blocky" effect.