Ok, first of all: I have no idea if this should be in the critics lounge or adventure related talk'n'chat. If you disagree with it being here, I'm sorry. If not, have a nice cup of tea, sit down and voice your opinion on the matter at hand.
(http://www.whamgames.com/images/Forumsht/howdoors01.png)
In the above picture you see a rather familiar-looking (if you've seen my previous threads here) fellow standing in a narrow corridor with doors on both sides (because, seriously, what kind of an architecht would only build doors on ONE side of a corridor in real life?). My question is this: what is the best way to depict these doors? In the image above you can see two of my ideas, which are both variations of the ingenious "Cut the top off, but leave the hinges in place" strategy. I'm not actually 100% sure if this is a good way to go, and would like opinions and perhaps even images (if you have them) on how other people have managed their way around this issue.
(And before you ask: No, i can't just make the entire door and have it slightly transparent, because there might be an object BEHIND the said door, that the player needs to be able to click, and then it would just be a clusterf***).
-WHAM
I think just use objects as the door or doors. so you put things behind it easier. cause you have to animate the doors too don't you.
Ps. I dont think this does go in the critic lounge maybe General discussion or adventure related talk'n'chat
You can also make doors "dissipate" (turn from solid to transparent and non-clickable) when character passes by.
The doors are obviously objects, and can therefore be seen through. My main point was to wonder how people DRAW these doors, so they don't look stupid.
The idea of having the doors go transparent when characters are near them would be a fairly good one, especially if I set the door's clickable status to "false" whenever a character is too close. I'll have to look into that.
Honestly, I probably wouldn't make a hallway with doors on both sides.
But, if I for some reason needed doors on both sides, it would look something like this: Google image (http://www.jeffzugale.com/artblog/uploaded_images/hallway_progress01-768841.jpg)
But I would never do more than 1 maybe 2, hallways in this style in a game otherwise it would become very repetitive (and I wouldn't have that long of a hallway or use scaling because once the character walked a little past the first door on the left and right, it would cut to the next scene).
If I were to do a straight on view like you have, I would probably just put windows in the foreground with narrow support beams so they wouldn't hide the player character (that's assuming this is a space ship). Then perhaps some hallway scenes with pipes running down the one side of the hallway in the foreground, but never enough to be distracting.
But I would probably never have doors that lead to a room in the foreground. I feel it could possibly break immersion, or people could easily miss them if it's not done right. Look at The Vacuum or 6 Days a Sacrifice, I never once thought it was stupid that they didn't have doors in the foreground. It definitely makes things easier to understand and remember.
But for ideas on how to draw doors like that... hmm I'm not sure. I'd probably do the transparent gradient (where you can see through more of the door near the top, and less at the bottom--but I would also draw walls, because doors would look odd standing there without walls).
What the hell, Ryan... have you draw that??
Please, please help me :P I'm begging you on my knees... ;D
I tried to avoid making doors on both sides, but it just wasn't a realistic and immersive option, as I want to stay loyal to my own "realism" rules. I'm making a fairly big game with nearly a hundred corridors such as these, all interconnected and navigateable by the player (with a proper map of-course), leading to over a hundred different areas and rooms in a space station. I've drawn a map of the space station, and I just can't make it feel realistic or good without sometimes having doors on both sides of the corridor.
I guess I'll just HAVE to try fiddling the rooms around until I can somehow make it seem logical that there are never doors on BOTH sides of a corridor, though the notion strikes me as unrealistic and silly. =(
Quote from: WHAM on Thu 14/01/2010 08:06:52
I guess I'll just HAVE to try fiddling the rooms around until I can somehow make it seem logical that there are never doors on BOTH sides of a corridor, though the notion strikes me as unrealistic and silly. =(
I totally agree. But I like to imagine a background to look and act more like a stage in a theater. Anything on the 'wall' between the stage and audience isn't important to the viewer, unless it is only foreground elements to help fill up the background and give depth perhaps.
Doors in the foreground have been done before, but most of them I've seen are just cutouts in the blackness like you have, without the door being visible. I'm personally not a big fan of either. :P
Maybe I read this wrong before. What exactly are you asking about how to draw the doors? Or where ?
In that case I think you should do an animation of it opening when the player gets close to it if that's what you are saying making them slightly transparent won't look too well. ;)
If you talking about the static door then in space there is no other way then the way you did it.
Unless you got a good imagination.
Oy!
I fail to understand why you have to draw the doors in the first place. Unless you should be able to enter all those doors, why draw them? Even then, I'd recommend re-planning your rooms so that all exits are either on the sides or in the far end.
Just because they exist doesn't mean you need to draw them, that's an absurd statement.
I think you don't need to see the door frames, part of the doors etc. to let the player know, that they are essentially there. We don't see the front wall and still assume one exists.
Using floor space is the way to go, methinks. It's been done often enough with those kind of view points.
I mocked up an example using your general layout:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/howdieDoor.png)
I hope this helps in giving you another direction to go with your problem.
Here is the scenario I have at hand:
A corridor with several doors in it. In a certain situation in a game, the doors will cease to function for a brief period of time. During this time I want to be able to create a tangible reason for the player not being able to access the doors.
To use the doors, player must click on them, after which the main character moves to the door, the door animates and the room is changed. When the door are inoperable, the animation is not run, and the character states that door won't open for him. If I don't have a door to click, but just the floor space to give the image that there is a door there, the player will either have to click on a hotspot that has no visual cue of a door, besides the empty space, or will just be unable to walk into that space, for no VISIBLE reason.
The best way to do that is the door opens when the player get close to the door but the player still has to click on the door. it just is better i think. then when the doors stop working which is scripting you just say if player done whatever You just say player.say ("door won't open"). Else door opens
Ps. Sorry If you talking about something else. I am bad at understanding what you are asking for.
It's ok. My main goal was to ask around and see if someone had found a nice-looking and effective way to solve a similiar issue in the past, and from this thread I've already gathered a few workarounds that might do the trick. I'll know better when I start testing properly.
If someone still has more feasible ideas, feel free to post up.
Thanks people!
Wow, this is a tough situation you've written yourself into. Still...
Can you make it so that the camera angle changes when you click on a door, and so would show the door opening/entering next room animation separately? Then when the doors are inoperable, it cuts to a camera angle showing the character standing in front of a static door with whatever error message there is.
In other words, the doors in this view of the corridor are not animated. To make this consistent though, you'd need to make separate animations for the other side of the corridor, so that players don't get confused.
Quote from: auriond on Thu 14/01/2010 14:19:33
Wow, this is a tough situation you've written yourself into. Still...
Can you make it so that the camera angle changes when you click on a door, and so would show the door opening/entering next room animation separately? Then when the doors are inoperable, it cuts to a camera angle showing the character standing in front of a static door with whatever error message there is.
In other words, the doors in this view of the corridor are not animated. To make this consistent though, you'd need to make separate animations for the other side of the corridor, so that players don't get confused.
This was my original concern, which brought me to my current one: I could try spinning the camera around to show the doors that are being accessed, but seeing as I have AI controlled characters moving in the same space, it would just prove too difficult to have them cope with the changes in viewpoint without awkward animation an glitching. Also, I want to try and keep the camera angles uniform (as I said, there are many corridors like the one you see in the picture) and if the camera changed direction at any time, I worry that it could easily disorient players.
Ive come across this problem too, and solved it like this. (http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx21/DjCheminee/gamescreenshot1.jpg) As you can see, in the left down corner I made the entrance to the bathroom. Just drew a small piece of the wall as you should see it from the point of viewing...
NPCs would certainly complicate the issue.
Or, how about having a unique design for your door that incorporates some sort of light or coloured frame when the door is operational? Then when it's not, the door is dark.
You could use panels with which the player has to interact to open a specific door.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/howdieDoor02.png)
And additionally to animating the doors (on the far wall) when they open, you could play a sound effect making it clear if the doors in the front have opened after interacting with the respective panel. You can of course also give an audio signal as a negative response and let the character say something to that respect...
ps: note that my example is a wee bit on the smallish side and very crudely done (emoticon of choice).
I've only briefly skimmed over this thread ... but I wanted to drop in and offer my $.02 :)
First, if you make the game so there are only doors on one side of the corridor I doubt you'd have players questioning it. While in the real world it doesn't make sense, in a game environment most players would never even consider it odd. However, I'm with you. I try to keep things very "real" like that too.
My suggestion would be to make it so that there are no "objects" floating inside the doors you open. It's okay to have the doors on both sides of the corridors (and I really dig your game's style by the way) but having doors open only to reveal an object seems odd to me. Make it so they must enter the room. If you do it in this way you could use the transparent door idea (which I'm a fan of).
Something like this (forgive the change of style and resizing of the character):
(http://www.twin-design.com/ags/help/wham001.png)
The door itself could be an easily reusable object that animates open and then you can enter the room. This might create many more rooms (if you have planned many of these doors with objects inside them) but you could always create one generic room and just change the little details of it as needed to make many rooms from one template.
This was just my thought and please forgive me if I completely misunderstood your intentions :)
Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Fri 15/01/2010 18:47:56
I've only briefly skimmed over this thread ... but I wanted to drop in and offer my $.02 :)
First, if you make the game so there are only doors on one side of the corridor I doubt you'd have players questioning it. While in the real world it doesn't make sense, in a game environment most players would never even consider it odd. However, I'm with you. I try to keep things very "real" like that too.
My suggestion would be to make it so that there are no "objects" floating inside the doors you open. It's okay to have the doors on both sides of the corridors (and I really dig your game's style by the way) but having doors open only to reveal an object seems odd to me. Make it so they must enter the room. If you do it in this way you could use the transparent door idea (which I'm a fan of).
Something like this (forgive the change of style and resizing of the character):
(http://www.twin-design.com/ags/help/wham001.png)
The door itself could be an easily reusable object that animates open and then you can enter the room. This might create many more rooms (if you have planned many of these doors with objects inside them) but you could always create one generic room and just change the little details of it as needed to make many rooms from one template.
This was just my thought and please forgive me if I completely misunderstood your intentions :)
I try to avoid objects appearing behind the doors, but as I have NPC's that move around and MIGHT end up behind such doors AND must be interacted with in order to survive the game, I can see more than one issue with this.
At the moment I'm re-designing the map so that I can explain the doors only appearing on one side of the corridors. The transparent doors idea will definitely go into use in some project, but I think it will end up causing too much interference in the current game.
[quoute][..], but I think it will end up causing too much interference in the current game.[/quote]
I'm so happy you've decided this. :)
It makes it easier for the player in many ways. Control, memory, navigation, etc. And it looks cleaner.
Quote from: auriond on Thu 14/01/2010 23:40:26
NPCs would certainly complicate the issue.
Or, how about having a unique design for your door that incorporates some sort of light or coloured frame when the door is operational? Then when it's not, the door is dark.
When the cursor moves on the open door, or an other entrance that I didn't mark with a closed door, a red arrow starts to animate. ;)