Wintermute (WME) to replace AGS as dominant development tool?

[lawrenceofarabia]

It has come to my attention that the developers of the AG development tool Wintermute are now impementing support for 3D characters over 2D backgrounds (such as seen in most new commercial adventure games) with colored lighting, shadows the whole shebang. They are currently running a public test of this feature at this site so you can download the raw demo of the feature here.

http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=668.0

This is very exciting for 3D artists such as myself and I can't wait to see it released. The question I want to ask is what do you people think of the Wintermute engine and how will this new development effect the underground AG scene?

[MrColossal]

Good for them. Downloading the demo to take a peak.

How will this effect indie adventure games? Well, some people will make games with it and they will have 3d characters over 2d backgrounds. What else will it do?

There isn't a battle between AGS and Wintermute and I think people here would love it if Wintermute gained a following like we have here. The more people working on adventure games the better.

I don't really like your subject heading because it can seem trolly and insight flames. So as an act of prevention, please don't get into a big arguement over which is better. There's no point to it.

Either way, good luck wintermute.

[James Kay]

I agree with MrColossal.
The more free and easy-to-use tools there are for the amateur game developer to choose from the better. And only because one supports 3D doesn't automatically mean it's better. I, for one, am not looking forward to endless adventures featuring Poser models - or simple adventures requiring 3GHz machines with the latest 3D cards because the developers have no idea hwo to model, texture, bone and animate a character.Ã, 

That said, I do hope it works well - I might have a look at the engine myself.
More power to the homebrew developer to keep adventures alive, I say!

[lawrenceofarabia]

Yeah sorry about the heading, I had intended it for another adventure game forum and decided to put it on this one as well. I didn't intend to stir peoples emotions up. 

[edmundito]

Heh, I think we need this kind of drama in this forum... I'm going to leave my reply with a cliffhanger:

WILL ERIC LIVE? FIND OUT NEXT WEEK. SAME COLOSSAL-FORUM, SAME COLOSSAL-TOPIC!

[Pumaman]

We've discussed 3D characters at quite some length:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=14125.0

The general conclusion seemed to be that AGS should concentrate on doing the best that it possibly can for 2D games, rather than trying to support both 2D and 3D characters in a half-assed manner.

As was said in that thread, it would be neat to have 3D character support, and some people would find it really useful.

But, it does take a lot of skill to be able to construct good-looking 3D character models with a low enough poly count to be used in a real-time game environment.

Anyway, good luck to Wintermute; as eric says, this isn't a competition and if this means that more people get into adventure game making, then that's good for everyone.

[Mr Flibble]

I'll second that.

[Pod]

Prime case of reasons why not to go down the 3d route:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,433

Yes, it LOOKS fantastic. Yes it resembles Monkey Island 3's artwork. Yes, it needs a 3d graphics card to run a 2d game.........

[scotch]

Well that's a 2d game, but I assume you mean the 3d hardware acceleration...
That is a reason NOT to use it? I think it uses the 3d support well, alpha blended characters on high res backgrounds at a high framerate... who doesn't have a 3d card/chipset? only people with ancient computers that wouldn't be able to run that game well if it was done in software mode.
I'd love if AGS supported that feature, it opens up a lot of possibilities for those of us not trying to emulate the early 90s.  As for the real 3d that was just added to WME, it's a nice addition, but I can only see a couple of games being done in 2d/3d, it really seems to me that pure 3d would be easier to work with and offer more possibilities  (perhaps I'm biased as I'm making a pure 3d adventure game engine).

AGS will remain the most popular 2d adventure game making engine, and this one will become the first choice for 2d/3d ones.  I'm glad such an engine finally exists.

[Mickey Bitsko]

The more the merrier!  This world needs more great tools like AGS that allow folks to be creative.  That's what it's all about.   

[Ize]

I think you could have pretty cool games with a 2-d model, like "shanny the paper boy" or sommin' like that.
I think the more the merrier, now we have another engine, meaning more designers and more adventures.
Some designers here could give their designs to some of the good 3-d modelers there for some coool games.

[Pau]

Prime case of reasons why not to go down the 3d route:

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,433

Yes, it LOOKS fantastic. Yes it resembles Monkey Island 3's artwork. Yes, it needs a 3d graphics card to run a 2d game.........

I've played the demo and its graphic quality is superb. The download is big (because it includes voices) but is worth in.  However, I think everybody agrees good 2D graphics are better than bad 3D ones.