World

This chapter will discuss how to load and use the game world in REGoth.

Most world-related operations can be found inside src/components/GameWorld.hpp.

Loading a World

There are multiple options for loading a world in REGoth:

1. load everything and run the init script,
2. load everything but don’t run the init script,
3. load only the world mesh.

We will go through all of them.

As starting point, we will use this application template:

#include <memory>

#include <BsFPSCamera.h>
#include <Components/BsCCamera.h>

#include <core.hpp>
#include <components/GameWorld.hpp>

class REGothWorldViewer : public REGoth::EmptyGame
{
public:
  using REGoth::EmptyGame::EmptyGame;

  void setupMainCamera() override
  {
    REGoth::EmptyGame::setupMainCamera();

    mMainCamera->SO()->addComponent<bs::FPSCamera>();
  }

  void setupScene() override
  {

  }
};

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  auto config = REGoth::parseArguments<REGoth::EngineConfig>(argc, argv);
  REGothWorldViewer engine{std::move(config)};

  return REGoth::runEngine(engine);
}

This will set up an empty application with a flying FPS-style camera.

Loading everything and run the init script

This is the option used to initialize a full game world as you would expect from playing Gothic. The world mesh will be there, all supported Vobs are loaded, decoration, lights, basically everything possible to load from a ZEN. However loading only the ZEN will not get you NPCs, some items and other objects you might expect to find, as those are placed via the worlds init script. Therefore, this init script is executed as well so that those are put into the world as well.

Inside the applications setupScene-method, go like this:

void setupScene() override
{
  HGameWorld gameWorld = GameWorld::importZEN("OLDWORLD.ZEN");
  gameWorld->runInitScripts();
}

This will set you up with everything you need. You can use the handle returned by GameWorld::importZEN to access more world related functionality such as creating characters or items.

Note

You can also chose to not run the init scripts so the world won’t be filled with characters. This will also improve loading times.

Load only the world mesh

If you really only need the world mesh, you don’t need to initialize the script VM. You will however lose support for using GameWorld component. This is really only useful for development related testing.

To only load the world mesh from a ZEN, you need to include the following header:

#include <world/internals/ConstructFromZEN.hpp>

And do this inside setupScene:

void setupScene() override
{
  REGoth::World::loadWorldMeshFromZEN("ADDONWORLD.ZEN");
}

As you can see, this is using an internal header, so handle it with care.

Using the world

Once you have successfully initialized a world, you can use the created GameWorld component to access it. See src/components/GameWorld.hpp for the GameWorld class.

The GameWorld class allows you to create your own NPCs, Items and also gives you access to the waynet among other things.