MD2 based geometry?

[Ed]

I've never been able to get a firm grasp on any of the programming aspects of Doom editing, but I've been rattling an idea in my head and would like to see how much a stretch it would be to come to fruition if it's at all possible.

I've been toying around with static MD2 based geometry in maps for some of the more complex areas or to achieve rotation/dynamic movement that the GZDoom engine isn't quite capable of. So far so good. My idea was for a plug-in for DB2 or a lite, stand alone program with a pre-made set of your basic geometric shapes that could be inserted into the editor in with the resources and automatically written MODELDEF /scaling information and DECORATE dumped into a generated PK3. The basic left, right, vertical rotations could be saved in the base model files that the plug-in draws from and assigned within the editor as to how you want the MD2 brush to function.

With careful editing, you can flub an MD2 into the existing geometry without looking out of place. GZDoom currently doesn't have vertex lighting for models, but it has been done in Doomsday and other OGL ports. Although the dimensions for collision would be limited to basic height and width, it could potentially expand a lot of the hurdles in Doom mapping that have to be more or less hacked in to look convincing.

Is this at all possible or too radical, or are there some unknown technical limitations I am unaware of that would make this outright impossible?

[Vermil]

An important thing to consider is when the engine stops rendering the mob (and hence associated model).

Vanilla Doom will stop rendering a sprite when the sector that the centre of the mobs hitbox is in, is no longer visible.

This is how GZDoom functions with both sprites and models. It's no different to Vanilla.

I believe Risen3D has a model flag to force it to render a model for as long as a part of it is in view. Otherwise it renders sprites and models identically to GZDoom and Vanilla.

Doomsday has removed this rendering limit and automatically renders any sprite or model as long as part of it is in view (i.e rendering is no longer based off the mobs hitbox, by default).

[NiuHaka]

From my quest to find the perfect port for my project I have found that Doomsday is by far the most superior when it comes to using 3d models. It also ends up being as simple as plug and play for people who want to use your mods.

You can easily create map geometry and place it into your map like any place-able item.