3d Faux-retro cyberspace...

[Technocrat]

Always keen to try new gimmicks gameplay challenges, I've decided to see about incuding one or two short 3d segments representing the protagonist's interaction with cyberspace. Here, have a few pictures.






With the AGS3d plugin (which is awesome, I must say), I've been testing out building a world of primitives. For whatever reason, using sprites in here doesn't work (I'm guessing it's because of the newer version of AGS), so I'm resorting to monocolour surfaces on my primitives. I'm pretty sure I can make this work, but I wanted your opinion on the colour scheme/style I'm building cyberspace out of here. Thus far, I can make things rotate, as well!

I've decided to go for this kind of style as deliberately "spartan". The protagonist is fishing around inside the systems of a government agency (ergo, a body who are unwilling to spend more than necessary on UI decor)

But don't just take my word pictures for it, have a go of it yourself. Just interact with the panel by the bed or door to enter the environment. I figured I should check that it at least works on a decent proportion of computers before I decide whether it should be an integral component of the game! Right-click jumps in cyberspace, by the way.

DOWNLOAD HERE

[Chicky]

Runs flawlessly on my windows emulator and looks great! Couldn't find any problems with the collision.

[Dualnames]

The AGS3D plugin is indeed awesome, I just have no idea what game to make out of it. Using sprites does work btw. If you're getting a crash, then that made two of us and I know how to fix it.

I also never managed to make it work with recent versions of AGS
So please do tell me what you did, cause I literally tried pretty much everything.

Sprites also work just only on one side of the primitive, so rotation may be needed. The best thing to do is to make a cube primitive and place a sprite then see in which side the sprite was placed.

EDIT: Also well, you already know it I presume, it's smooth as fuck. I'd suggest a reduce of the walkspeed though just slightly, trust me it will be for the best.  

[DoorKnobHandle]

Works fine and looks great.

Not to toot my own horn too much but if you're looking for many more polygons and true texture mapping, special effects via shaders, much, much better performance and so on, check out my Razerblade 3D plugin. Requires you to run with the D3D9 graphics mode tho.

[Technocrat]

The AGS3D plugin is indeed awesome, I just have no idea what game to make out of it. Using sprites does work btw. If you're getting a crash, then that made two of us and I know how to fix it.

I also never managed to make it work with recent versions of AGS
So please do tell me what you did, cause I literally tried pretty much everything.
EDIT: Also well, you already know it I presume, it's smooth as fuck. I'd suggest a reduce of the walkspeed though just slightly, trust me it will be for the best.  

I can put the sprites *in*, they just invariably come out looking like:

whether they're on a surface, or even just an object. The only time I had a crash was when I tried to put thousands of textured objects in just to see  what it would do, so I think I brought that one upon myself.

I didn't find making it work in the latest version too difficult - there were a couple of times I botched it because I skipped ahead on instructions, but when I followed every single step (and made sure that pretty much every folder had the components for 3D in) it managed to work in the end. Here's the entirety of what I've got for my AGS files thus far, working in 3.1.2 - see if it works in yours, too!

Works fine and looks great.

Not to toot my own horn too much but if you're looking for many more polygons and true texture mapping, special effects via shaders, much, much better performance and so on, check out my Razerblade 3D plugin. Requires you to run with the D3D9 graphics mode tho.

I remember watching the video for your 3d plugin too - unfortunately, the laptop I'm building this on is absolute crap, so using yours would have to wait for a later episode when I've finally got a shinier machine! Quick question, can yours handle transparencies as well? I think that's a big downer I've got at the moment, especially since I'm trying to make the whole 1980s style "what cyberspace will look like" ambience.

[Dualnames]

You need to import an image that's not a png, and set its number on the SPRITE/TEXTURE via the Editor (the in-game one). I had trouble with imported sprites that used alpha channels (regardless if they were imported) and also with sprites that were imported using something but no transparency/palette index 0. Even sprites I imported using top-left or top-right and had no alpha channels caused crash. I think so at least.

Try various stuff it will work. I just tried so many ways, I'm not sure which one is the correct.

[Kweepa]

Looking good!
Hopefully someone, someday, will release a game with AGS3d
What is it you're trying to do with sprites? Add a texture to a cube? Or place a sprite object or character in the world? Either should work. It may be a bit-depth problem. Make sure everything, including the room background, is the same bit depth.
I tried playing the demo on my laptop and the controls are almost impossible to use. You should probably add the game controller plugin. Or I should plug in a mouse. One or the other.

[DoorKnobHandle]

I remember watching the video for your 3d plugin too - unfortunately, the laptop I'm building this on is absolute crap, so using yours would have to wait for a later episode when I've finally got a shinier machine! Quick question, can yours handle transparencies as well? I think that's a big downer I've got at the moment, especially since I'm trying to make the whole 1980s style "what cyberspace will look like" ambience.

Yep, you can even write your own shaders with it so you could go for some cool refraction/reflection stuff like you see in recent top-notch 3d games!

[ddq]

Other than needing some better controls and a moving background, I like it a lot! The retro cyberspace feel is cool, sort of Tron-like. Razerblade would be nice too, in a different, more modern way. It's two bad it and AGS3D require opposite graphics drivers, else it'd be cool if the retro cyberspace was lower-class and the Razerblade alternate reality was for the elite or something, but that's not any of my business!

[theo]

Works like crazy!

A cool trick to add to your cyberspace elements. 

I had one issue though but it may be the result of sheer user-stupidity; Once hitting ESC the cursor refused to budge. It was still connected to the 3d viewport and hence, always centered.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I like the cleaner style of the surfaces without textures.  My only suggestions would be to add some slight aliasing to take some of the jaggedness off the surfaces (perhaps the plugin could add support for this if it isn't already possible?) and perhaps add some 'glow' to certain devices, like the sphere.  Aside from that, the only problem I see is the cursor doesn't lock to the center of the screen and drifts about, and you probably should change the graphic to crosshairs or something similar when in a first person movement mode.  Very cool!

[Galen]

That looks really nice but will there be lightcycle battles?

[Cirius]

What a beautiful juxtaposition of Roger in a 3D world...

[cianty]

Only had a look at it now and it's very impressive. I'll have to look into this type of stuff some time...

[R4L]

Will there be any SHODAN references?