3D characters in AGS?

[MrColossal]

heh did you read the book that comes with the game? it's all explained in there

[shbaz]

heh did you read the book that comes with the game? it's all explained in there

Working on it now. 

I played it a long time ago when it was first released, solved a couple of puzzles, and then gave up on the pushbutton thingy.

[Cricthon]

3D GUIs would actually be quite nice. I think shbaz was trying to say that they wouldn't be as critical as 3D character support but you could definitely do neat effects with them. So, perhaps, if people were asking for "everything 3D", it wouldn't be such a bad thing, except it'd be a lot of work for Chris. However, no one said that great engines are easy to program, especially when you don't get paid for it. That is why when such an engine comes out, it makes people extremely happy and grateful.

[Crichton]

I just wanted to point out another advantage of adding 3D character support. This is an excerpt from a long article about future of adventures on AdventureGamers site:

"...It seems like this feature was lost in time [Ed: Speaking of NPCs moving about their own business in a gameworld rather than being stuck at their "posts" waiting for you to talk to them]. I remember Revolution tried to innovate with their (primitive) Virtual Theatre system. I remember The Last Express, in which characters more or less lived a life of their own. There's even the much-forgotten Kingdom O'Magic. From what I recall, it wasn't an excellent game per se, but its game world was alive with lots of characters randomly moving about. Where has that gone? Why do other genres do succeed in putting some AI-based or cleverly scripted elements in the game?


Once again, 3D comes peeking around the corner. AI becomes very powerful when combined with 3D, as it makes it easier to animate characters than with traditional frame-by-frame animation. You can actually design a flock of birds to fly around according to some basic routines and not have them locked in a looped pattern. And that's not just eye candy for the techno-savvy. Ambient AI agents can be used to inhabit the game world with believable creatures, resulting in a living world and an additional subtle layer of interaction."

So, you see, scotch, there's another advantage to using even a basic 3D.

[shbaz]

AI isn't 3d dependant though, just looks better in 3d and maybe easier to program.

[Crichton]

AI isn't 3d dependant though, just looks better in 3d and maybe easier to program.

I think that's what the article clearly said though.

[scotch]

I would say AI is harder to program in 3d than 2d, it's just another dimension to have to think about.  "The easier to animate" comment isn't necessarily true either, some things are easier in 3d, such as not having to re draw for each frame.  But there are other complicated, technical things to think about.

The only possible advantage that this simple 3d characters thing has over pre rendered or hand drawn is the smooth animation.  Nothing 3d programming related is relevant since the 3d is only cosmetic, all the calculations etc would still be done in 2d.

[Punch]

3D doesn't simplify flocking or pathfinding.

"AI becomes very powerful when combined with 3D, as it makes it easier to animate characters than with traditional frame-by-frame animation."

Yeah. Because we all know that animation is inherant to AI.

You can have the most intelligent AI on the face of the planet applied to a simple square if you want to. The animation is purely secondary. I guess that they mean interaction animations, in which case 3D can become useful thanks to inverse kinematics, skeletal animations and similar technologies. A character can be made to reach out their hand and touch a certain position a lot more easily in 3D, because it's not an 'animation' as such, it's a mathematical calculation. The same idea of calculation over animation can be applied to many parts of a game, and that's where 3D becomes powerful.

I'm doubting that this would be implimented into AGS with 3D character support, though.

Flocking, pathfinding and random paths are all possible in 2D, as are AI creatures that wander independantly. As far as I remember, PQ1 had cars that drove around the streets on random paths. And if it wasn't random, then GTA's were. Both of these games were 2D.

Not that 3D is a bad thing, it's just that the article didn't really present valid reasoning.

- Punch