3D characters in AGS?

[shbaz]

True, to a point: the 3D model itself would not take up much filesize. But keyframe information and textures might still take up quite some space.

Yes, for a grand total of about 3mb per model (maximum).

I don't expect 3d to ever be implemented, though it would be nice.

I'm more interested in ways to take advantage of AGS's plus sides and combine it with another 3d engine for the other things I mentioned (action sequences, cutscenes, world maps). I'm not familiar with any other 3d engines, but Blender requires quite a bit of scripting that you wouldn't have in AGS for simple things like dialogue and GUI. It is pretty easy to make a short racing sequence or a world map though.. thus the niceness of combining them.

Has anyone done anything like this before (executing another program to work with AGS)?

[stuh505]

ook ook: he was replying to my topic numbers, his numbering is correct

miez:  Sure, it would be POSSIBLE to make a humongous texture to have the other way take up more space...but take this simple example...

The desired goal is to have a character 300 pixels high be able to walk, open doors, shake hands, stoop, wave, and have an idle animation.

Using sprites, with an alpha channel, that would probably be over 20 MB.

But using 3d,

I don't think the size of the keyframes would even be signifcant enough to take note of.

Let's say a 500x500 JPG was used as a texture (64 KB)

And the model takes up about 200 KB (probably less than this, I was looking at a high poly char for ref)

Then you now have all the same animations, and possibly more animations, for about 300 KB...this is 67 times less space, and I think this is a fairly median case.

MrColossol:

these other programs that support 3d are not really designed with adventure gaming in mind...im not suggesting AGS ever become a full 3d program like them, but having 3d characters just seems like a really prominent adventure game feature and deserving of being in AGS.

[MrColossal]

They weren't designed with anything in mind stuh... If you load up blitz basic there isn't anything precoded for you, there's nothing that says you have to make an FPS or a racing game...

If you just want someone else to make an engine specifically for adventure game creation then that's fine, it's not gonna happen for a while I don't think but you can wish for it.

[modgeulator]

Is there a way this could be handled by a plugin? Maybe some of you could take it upon yourselves to develop the tools needed for support of 3d characters?

[shbaz]

Is there a way this could be handled by a plugin? Maybe some of you could take it upon yourselves to develop the tools needed for support of 3d characters?

Thats a good idea, since there are open source gaming engines that a plugin could be derived from.

I still like my dual-prog idea though.

Stuh, Mr. Collosal is correct, 3d game engines are rarely designed with a specific type of game in mind (disregarding the FPS engines like quake and etc). The Tony Hawk Pro Skater engine (PS1) was used to make the Spiderman game. The main aspects of a game engine are lighting, bones, and physics. The rest is usually coded on a game by game basis because it isn't that complicated and they can basically copy/paste code.

Your estimations of filesize are close, but a little underdone. Modern game models mostly use 1024x1024 textures, one for color, one for bump mapping, and a 512x512 for specular shading. Typically you'll see people using lossless formats like PNG because jpgs show artifacts, and the filesize would be a little higher. Consoles are different because of the vast differences in speed and RAM.

[Davis]

Has anybody given any thought to just how much work this is going to be? Making a full game in 2D is a task many of us have trouble finishing. Throwing 3d characters in the mix  is gonna make the task only bigger and bigger. Building character models, boning and skinning, keyframing and animating ... it's a huge task.

Your limitations aren't everyone's limitations. Just because you or I couldn't make use of a feature doesn't mean the feature shouldn't exist. A great program like AGS should at least intend to allow everyone to work at their full potential. Allowing someone who's better then you at something to shine doesn't reduce any sort of functionality of AGS for those who arent using that particular advanced funtionality. It's not like if 3D was added, all the sudden he's going to remove 2D and now everyone has to get with the program. It just opens a new feature for 3D artists.

[shbaz]

Your limitations aren't everyone's limitations. Just because you or I couldn't make use of a feature doesn't mean the feature shouldn't exist.

Well put. That is exactly what I was thinking.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Bravo Davis. Good stuff.

JD

[Miez]

Your limitations aren't everyone's limitations. Just because you or I couldn't make use of a feature doesn't mean the feature shouldn't exist. A great program like AGS should at least intend to allow everyone to work at their full potential. Allowing someone who's better then you at something to shine doesn't reduce any sort of functionality of AGS for those who arent using that particular advanced funtionality. It's not like if 3D was added, all the sudden he's going to remove 2D and now everyone has to get with the program. It just opens a new feature for 3D artists.

and that's exactly why I said:

It would be cool to have this feature in AGS

[DCillusion]

AGS should definitely stay 2D.  Adventure games NEVER fare well in the 3D arena.  Current games like the Nancy Drew series, Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy, & Asylum use the 3D images, but are still in the 2D game plane.  AGS already supports this

You could, probably, get close to the results you're looking for if future versions of AGS simply supported raster layers such as psd's or psp's:  Walk-Behinds would be "pixel perfect",  full lighting & transparency benefits of rasters,  different layers could scroll at different speeds, characters and items would be flawlessly blended to their backdrop and entire regions of the background could be animating constantly.  Rasters are really the only difference AGS  has to current high-end engines commercial companys are designing.

NEVER FORGET KING'S QUEST 8 - THE GAME KEN AND ROBERTA WILLIAMS MADE AFTER PLAYING SUPER MARIO 64!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MrColossal]

"Adventure games NEVER fare well in the 3D arena."

this, in my opinion, is another terrible arguement.

That doesn't mean anything since adventure games don't fair well at all.

Just because you feel it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it will never happen. I bet you 27 thousand dollars that there were people saying RPGs will NEVER work on a computer or something silly like that.

And besides. Grim Fandango seems to have done very well and many many many people love the crap out of it.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I dont think personally that adding 3D characters and objects to the game would be a bad thing. I dont think it would effect the game at all.

I think it would be the same becouse the background will always be 2d, therefore the game itself and its story and game play is not altered at all.

Besides, it might be a good addition for anyone who does program in 3D. Maybe they could add an object in a room that could animate a certain way and have less sprite limitations or something. Did that last part make sense?

JD

[Layabout]

Adding 3d characters COULD add atmosphere to adventure games. It also can be used to enhance the story and mood of a game. If you don't understand how, watch some movies and notice how all the scenes aren't from a straight on angle.

And for those that are interested, http://www.ogre3d.org

[Pau]

About the lightning, someone said that a 3D model of the room was needed, but as far as the camera doesn't moves in 3D, you can use a mask (256 levels of gray for example) to determine the z coordinate of each pixel of the backgroud. So you can do it easilly using the degradation tool of any paint program. This way tou can have moving lights with real-time shadow casting.

Maybe that was the idea when you were talking about a 3D model of the room, but I was trying to clarify that there is no need for a complete one (like a character would need)

[Edwin Xie]

I'd be interested in 3D engines for adventure games but how would you make 3D characters? I don't think you can easily configure that.

[Pau]

how would you make 3D characters? I don't think you can easily configure that.

What I was talking about was how the character shadow could interact realistically with the background.

In order to create a character you'll need a 3D modeler program that could export to the proper 3D format.

[Edwin Xie]

and that wouldn't be easy like 2D

[MrColossal]

for someone who doesn't know what they are doing 3d would be hard, yes.

for someone who doesn't know what they are doing 2d is hard so... yea.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I'd be interested in 3D engines for adventure games but how would you make 3D characters? I don't think you can easily configure that.

Well, I use poser for one to create the characters. I also use Blender and the MakeHuman plugin and then I skin and export the model.

As far as rooms go, I use a program from www.revolution3d.net forums which is called New World.

I download freeware objects. I create walls, ceiling, floor,lighting and set the camera angle and then I place all those objects into the newworld editor and make a scene.

For terrain stuff, I use genesis terrain editing capabilities. And occasionally bryce.

All this takes a while to do, but it is satisfying. If AGS supported 3d Characters, I could import the characters rather than just take snapshots of each frame.

Then again, I wont be making a 3d game until after I release my Simpsons game and even that could be a while.

JD

[shbaz]

Well, I use poser for one to create the characters. I also use Blender and the MakeHuman plugin and then I skin and export the model.

Well, actually, your method would not work for realtime gaming. I'll give a short description of why that is.

Programs like Poser and MakeHuman are for creating realistic people - and they use a high amount of detail in the mesh to accomplish this goal. However, game models are usually blocky and underdetailed in comparison to rendered scenes. The reason for that is simple. How long does it take you to render a makehuman model? Do you think a computer could do that 5 times in a second? (Human) Game models will fall in the range of 500-5000 triangles, depending on the computer they are made for (Games in production now are shooting for 3 ghz machines and use up to 8000). In comparison, the MakeHuman female model has 13,610 triangles. The last game model I made had just under 2000.

For me, this actually makes it easier to create models because there are fewer vertices to place and fewer faces to unwrap for UV mapping. Unfortunately for people who get most of their stuff from other people, it could complicate things.

One way to get the MakeHuman model down to par is to decimate it, but that gives IMO terrible results.

Here is a comparison, the model on the left is mostly Yufster's creation, and the one on the right is a generic MakeHuman model I nabbed back when they were programming it: