Ok, I was pondering around the idea of continious walking and I thought up this little idea.
(http://www.fbc-bettendorf.com/evil/crap/longroom1.JPG)
Imagine that these are all four sides of a building. Now we set scaling so that the character gets larger on the edges and smaller twards the middle. Making the walkable areas a band that has the same arc as the building would make it look like the character is walking all the way around.
Call me crazy, I dont know how to explain it further.
Anybody get where I am going? Maybe this is just stupid
Maybe you should try it..
I would but I havent opened AGS for a long while. I was hoping somebody cought onto my idea and could help me out. :-\
It isn't THAT hard to do in AGS.. You don't even have to do any scripting..
I'd do it if I wasn't lazy.
So basically, this would make it look as if the character was walking around a square-shaped building and the camera would circle around the house? I think it would work. If you made some kind of foreground objects pass by every now and then, it might be even more convincing.
I'm not sure if it would look too rigid. That issue could probably be solved with some diagonal views for the character. Might be hard though. Anyway, I could see uses for this technique.
QuoteIt isn't THAT hard to do in AGS.. You don't even have to do any scripting..
I think it would require some scripting, because scaling levels in walkable areas change vertically (i hope that made sense) so you might have to change the scaling level in script depending on the character's x coord.
The Simpsons uses distorted backgrounds to simulate panning, and I think some of the discworld backdrops did a similar thing.
I think the arcs that describe the bottom of the walls on your diagram would have to be a little steeper though.
I'd be interested to see if this would work. I'd try it out, but I'm on a network'd computer sans AGS.
This sounds overly cool. Why do I never come up with these ideas :P
Anyways. cool.
Don't say those kinds of things, Haddas.. You'll imply that Evil is a genius and his ego will enlarge!
i am sorry. i really want to understand this but i don't can someone do a demo? i don't even understand what oyu are trying to show. Maybe i'm just stupid
Juding by the picture, I think Evil meant for walking around the inside of a 4 sided building...if this were for walking around the outside the lines would be going the opposite direction...in either case, it seems like this is just something that everyone already does...
Quoteit seems like this is just something that everyone already does...
I don't think I've seen anything exactly this anywhere before, but I guess it's basically just a looping room.
The biggest question I would have is, why? I'm having difficulty thinking of a reason to do this, other than for the sake of it.
There was a test demo thingy where this was done. I can't remember who made it, but i know it is possible. I was gunna use this effect for the RON town square, as in my eyes it is round. It would have been alot of fun to utilise.
Yeah, Pessi explained my idea better. Anyone know where I can find this game that Layabout is talking about?
They did that in the central room of the alien complex in The Dig, the room underground right after you got teleported to the other planet from the asteroid.
Here's what I'm wondering, does AGS have a loop background feature? I mean, once you've walked from one edge of the screen to the other, does AGS have a setting to allow it to repeat? If not, isn't this whole conversation kind of moot? And if so, then isn't that feature's inclusion in AGS make this conversation... old hat? I mean, just to say that, if the feature were written into the program, it must have been put there to anticipate just such an occasion... right?
That's what I said a few posts ago.
There isn't actually a 'Loop Room' function, as far as I know, but the scripting needed to do it is in Demo Quest. So, while I see what Evil means, and yes, it's kind of a nifty idea, I don't get the point of this thread.
what are you talking about. you can loop rooms in ags, just by having it larger than the resolution youre working in
what are you talking about scumm?
he's not talking about scrolling rooms he means an infinitely walkable room where you can constantly go right and eventually you'll loop around to the start again without leaving the room
You can? It's loop not scrolling, unless I missed some updated features, looping of room is not possible unless using script-hacking.
EDIT: fast rice!
its late in the morning where i am. im sorry. my bad. i didnt elaborate on looping, i just wrote that little sentence. ::)
yea you better apologize! who do you think you are? stick to giving advice in the beginners tech that actually helps people and leave the big questions to the big boys...
now if you'll excuse me i'll go back to moderating a forum full of fart and poop jokes.........
Eric "Big Boy" Colossal
You could seperate it with a fence or something weird like that, or have it transport you to a new identical room, but that wouldn't be seamless.
I like the idea, personally.
I guess you are refering to panoramic viewing (like in Quest for Glory V or Myst III: Exile)
Try googling for "panoramic view" or "panoviewer"
For instace, look here for the implementation via the opengl functions http://glscene.sourceforge.net/gallery_users.htm Spherical Panorama Viewer (exe + delphi source)
[edit]
direct link: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/glscene/PanoViewer.zip?download
Something like that can't <edit> can :) </edit> be build into AGS as a plugin, for example.
I can't remember, but i'm pretty sure a continueous loop can be done. I might be imagining things though. CJ will know.
It can be done, with some tricks and scripting though, as illustrated by Kairus' looping demo (which was later incorporated into teh demo game I think).
Quote from: Ashen on Wed 05/05/2004 01:38:49
That's what I said a few posts ago.
There isn't actually a 'Loop Room' function, as far as I know, but the scripting needed to do it is in Demo Quest.
Sorry for repeating myself, but....
With scrolling only the background view would be too flat in my opinion, thus it wouldn't provide the desired effect. :P
I got the thruts of this... Who do I give credit to if and when I use this in my game? To Evil?
I really like this idea. Wouldn't it be possible to use character.x and character.y settings for the main char and use something like SetViewport to make the room loop?
Quote from: TK on Wed 05/05/2004 13:18:20
I got the thruts of this... Who do I give credit to if and when I use this in my game? To Evil?
To yourself.
Quote from: Scorpiorus on Wed 05/05/2004 13:04:58
With scrolling only the background view would be too flat in my opinion, thus it wouldn't provide the desired effect. :P
Thats the thing, you make the image panoramic and set some scaling and it looks as if the building is actually 3D, like a 3D inviorment.
While the scaling will suit well for the character, the background needs to be passed though some sort of the distortion filter on the fly. If you open these jpegs that provided along with the ponoviewer with some ordinary viewer or paintbrush you'll see they are not look like a panoramic image yet.
Quote from: stuh505 on Tue 04/05/2004 18:21:19
I think Evil meant for walking around the inside of a 4 sided building...if this were for walking around the outside the lines would be going the opposite direction...
If I stand in the middleÃ, of a room and rotate (as so often I do) the corners are further awaf from me than the middles of the walls. If this is an interior the 'bulges' in the walls should come down from the corners, not up, a character getting larger at the bottoms of the bulges.
Since the bulges go up, I presume we are outside a building, tracking around it with a character who gets larger at the corners.
And I think Scorpius is right, games with 360 degree viewing display flat images through a kind of fish-eye lens that simulates 3D. I was thinking though- if AGS allowed frame by frame control of AVIs or other video files and allowed you to use a video as a backdrop (which might be possible and I just can't work it out) then you could achieve this effect by creating an animation using 3D software that pans 360 degrees inside a 3D interior or around a flat image (with distortion).
Then a character could stand in the centre of the screen and the video would play forwards when you click to it's right and backwards when you click to its left and so on...
Quote from: Ali on Thu 06/05/2004 12:00:18
you could achieve this effect by creating an animation using 3D software that pans 360 degrees inside a 3D interior or around a flat image (with distortion).
You could do that and stitch the files together to form a panorama and use Evil's method too, depending on how complex the scene is. Blender and any other worthy 3d app have Panorama Renderer's anyways, but they look outward rather than inward.
Ali, you couldnt have explained it better. However, I had just planed to draw it that way using a two point perspective with one point in the middle of each wall. I'll wip something up to try to explain my idea.
Like this...
(http://www.fbc-bettendorf.com/evil/crap/room_scroll.gif)
I added some people to it.
That looks terrific, better than I thought it would.
With a detailed background, it'd be really lovely. I hope you'll see a lot of people have a go at putting this into practice.
Didn't turn out as 3D as I wanted but I didnt want to spend an hour on it. Though I'm glad people caught on so I didnt look like a complete fool.
That somehow doesn't look right. Maybe it's too fast, or maybe the perspectives are off. But it just doesn't convince me that it's the outside of a building.
Well, I didnt intend for it to look great, just an example of how it might work.
I think the problem terranRICH is talking about is that the lines are curved. They'd be pretty much straight in reality only the angle would be changing. Now it's changing but because the walls are so short, they appear pretty curved. I think that might be causing the off-look.
Works pretty well for me though. I would prefer this over a regular 2-dimensional scrolling room, for a change at the least. It would work a lot better if the background was drawn, as Ali mentioned. When drawing it, it would probably be a good idea to make more of those curved lines on the wall for reference so everything would be in perspective, so to say. A grid would probably be the best. With the vertical lines closer to each other in the middle of the wall as it's kind of further away.
Looks pretty nice for me too. I see it like there is room with circular hollows and a camera in its center. The camera is zoomed in and is being rotated around that center. :P I don't think it would work with the straight lines, though, as their projection needs to be constantly changed and we then have to draw all the frames - each with a different angle of view, as Ali suggested.
Quote from: Evil on Thu 06/05/2004 23:18:46
Didn't turn out as 3D as I wanted but I didnt want to spend an hour on it. Though I'm glad people caught on so I didnt look like a complete fool.
Hey, it's actually a very neat idea you have raised. ;)
Hopefully this (very ugly) paintover of part of Evil's image will show that the camera is outside the building, not inside.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/room_scroll.gif)
I do think it might be possible to use this technique to greater effect on an interior.
A few ideas here. This was my idea on how the scaling might work and about how the walkables would go. this might help give it more of a 3D look.
(http://www.fbc-bettendorf.com/evil/crap/walkablearea.GIF)
hey evil, i tried somthing like this for a flash move, for the room spinning thing from the matrix. i was using strrait lines and no characterscaling and it still worked, just about.
So i totally get what you mean with this idea. i can see it being used in a game like plurghburg.