Building a level from tiles made out of 3D meshes?

Hello!

I'm so new to Unity that it's currently downloading in the background and I've queued up half a dozen or so video tutorials, so I made this thread to see if anyone was willing to point me in the right direction regarding my plans.

My goal is do create a 3D world from a grid based 2D map using tiles make in SketchUp, and then have the player move in this world in 1st person view, but step by step and using 90 degree turns, old school style like in Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master or more recently, Legend of Grimrock and Might Magic Legacy.

A simple sketch of how I envision it:



So what you see above is one tile being split into eight sections, four walls and four corners. I imagine that I only have to draw one wall section (A) and one corner section (B) that way, and then I can build any junction I want from those two pieces.

Is this a good plan? Does anyone have any pointers on where to start?

If not, I'll plow through the general (and possibly unrelated) tutorial videos I found and then begin to dabble and see where I end up with this puzzle. Perhaps the same principle for 2D tiled games can be re-used or updated here for what I'm trying to accomplish.

EDIT: Why doesn't my images show up? I tried both methods now...

 

Thank you for the tips!

Are you suggesting that I only draw the tiles the player currently sees, and in essence, create and remove the world around him depending on where he walks? That sounds intriguing.

I have not yet decided on a map size, but it would be several thousand tiles for one area. I did not plan to build the maps in the editor of Unity, but whatever I use to read and construct the map for the game could perhaps be used to construct the map for me in the editor as well, so I'd have a choice of both methods you mention?

 

A tile based approach is a common way to do it. I've used this editor and liked it:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/4194

 

There are even assets on the store that could be used for such a thing, such as http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/227836-Generic-Modular-Modern-Construction-Kit

 

I strongly suggest the Tidy Tile Pack #1 (http://u3d.as/content/doppler-interactive/tidy-tile-pack-1/2T7) - I used it in The Hero's Journey and it wound up working pretty well for me.

 

This one is really cool and a little different from the others: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/6821 it does tileable landscapes with a pretty complex system that is really great.


This is also amazing: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/14492

 

Thats what @Chariots was talking about, occlusion culling. You can do it for example with raycast ..or spherecast, or distance check. However, if you can spend twenty bucks or so, i would suggest to use InstantOC or any other OC pack from store. I'm very happy with InstantOC: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/16...g-LOD/page21?p=1376246&viewfull=1#post1376246

If you are interested to do OC yourself, check this for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_surface_determination

 

Thank you everyone for the tips!

I was quite surprised at the amount of purchase recommendations, rather than tutorial or learning recommendations... this is a quite different experience than when I, for example, learned to create iPhone apps.

As someone completely new to this, I want learn the ropes and how to do it myself, rather than to begin learning something which might become obsolete with the next update.

Either way, the budget for my project right now is £0 apart from my own time, so I guess I'll continue watching the tutorial videos for a while longer.