question about rpg's

[Mage]

Anyone ever played Mordor ? it's a great game, simple but fun.
anyway i wonder if anyone knows an utility (game engine) that would allow me to make a simmiliar game myself.
(for those who don't know how mordor looks like : i want to create an rpg with a first person view all the time, not an over the top view like all those anime/manga rpg's... ya know something like ultima underworld or return to castle ravenloft etc.)

[Kairus]

Mmm... I haven't played Mordor but it sounds like you need a 3D engine for making that kind of game (as you say it's a first person view game). Maybe Dark Basic would help, there are some others perhaps better 3D engines but I can't think of any right now.

[Mage]

nonono.. no 3d at all... hmmm dunno how to explain it... actually

[LordHart]

I know what you are talking about, but I dont think there are any engines for those kinds of games. The best thing to do is to actually learn a programming language and make your own, you could make it with sprites, and possibly psuedo 3d like wolfenstein 3d...

[Squinky]

Are you talking about the "Rogue" type /moiria spinoff game that hadd 2d stuff?

[Sylpher]

If this is the type of RPG that I think it is (and I am pretty sure it is). This could be done in AGS without that much difficulty. It would require a bit of scripting know how perhaps a bit above a general adventure game, though, it would be much easier then creating an entire game from scratch.

I would suggest messing around with GUI's and turning off the main character (called 'Hide Player Character' in the room settings/editor thingie). Turning off a main character allows you to do a first-person style game.

The real matter is how complex you want it to be. Turn based stuff is relatively simple though action oriented stuff gets more complex the more you want going on.

[Kairus]

Wolfenstein 3D was the beginning of the first person 3D style. I think doing something like that in AGS (possibly using the raw functions) might be very hard. You can try it, though, as there are many tutorials out there on how to code those kind of games. You would 'just' have to translate it into AGS, that's going to be the tricky part.

[LordHart]

I'd have to say it'd be impossible to do a Wolfenstein style game in AGS, unless CJ adds a 3d room feature of some sort, which I dont think would be a good idea.

[shbaz]

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1797

Is this the game you're talking about?

[Sylpher]

Well I don't know about impossible. It would be very difficult to script but a very fake 3d game could be put together. As well, with plug-ins a considerably elaborate 3d game could be made..

However, I don't think that is what he wants. First Person games were made in 2d much before 3d was norm.. and even before Wolfenstien.

The big daddy and first the comes to mind is Myst.. A bad example for what Mage wants but it is along the same lines.. It is first person yet it is still 2d. The major difference would be play mechanics.

First Person Rpgs back in the day generally had pretty complex GUI's. Sadly, I can't think of any examples right now to post screenshots but this is mordor..

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1797

And by the small screenshot if the play mechanics are like how many old First person rpgs were it could be done in AGS much easier then making a game for scratch. Their may be an engine more dedicated to the idea that may make things easier though I don't know of any.

The idea has been done in Rpg Maker 9X/200x but people had to kill the engine to do it.

[Meowster]

Doom was 2D. I don't know how, but it was. What is was not, was 3D. What?

[Squinky]

Yeah, I used to play that game a few years back...It's not reallt 3d so much is it? I remember it as being just static screens...

[Meowster]

I used to think it was 3D, and that it LOOKED 3D, but I played it a while ago and... I don't know... it sort of looked like 2D 3D. Sort of like... I don't know...

EDIT: I'm having slight trouble articulating...

[Sylpher]

Doom and Wolfenstein 3d were not technically 3d. They were very complex and cleaverly programmed 2d. However on a gameplay level it was 3d.

Does that make sense or have I made it worse?

[Meowster]

Much, much worse.

Hear ye, hear ye! Ernil Pherianath wants you to know he has never had sex with Tim Schafer.

[LordHart]

Wolfenstein and Doom were a mix of 2D and 3D, where characters and objects were made up of 2D sprites, put onto a 3D plane by which the levels were designed.

A good example of this is Duke Nukem 3D, which pushed the boundarys of the Doom engine, where it added the ability to look up and down, and to jump, allowing the world to look more "realistic" than other games of the time. But when you look at many of the objects and the enemies within the game, they were 2D sprites, and it all worked well, because they sprites were quite detailed for the time.

Now, if you are talking about making a game with a 1st Person perspective like Myst and Riven, and dont mind spending money, you could buy the Adventure Game Engine from http://www.twilightsoftware.com/

It looks like a good program, but yeah, the only downpoint is that it costs money.

[Gilbert]

Whether a game is really 3D or not depends on how you view it.

For example here's my classification:

Wolf 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D:
Game system/Gameplay : 2D, as you actually explore on a 2D map, even if there seems to be stairs and height factors, there's actually only one storey at one time at the position you're standing on, because if you can play the game on the overhead map screen you're actually playing the game with the same level of freedom of movement (if you know what I mean), though you can "jump" and "fly" in DK3D, it's of no REAL addition to the authetic freedom in the game (well I guess someone considered DK3D a 2.5D game, I won't care).
Graphics: represented as 3D

For Descent and whatever-astonishing-looking-but-completely-crap-modern-games:
Gameplay and graphics are both 3D.



An example of different people having different classification was back in the 80's and early 90's there're actually people calling Sierra and Lucasfilm styled adventure games 3D action adventure games, they're "3D" because you have to manuveur a character on a "3D" scene (which seemed to have depth, as you can move the character closer (down) to and farther (up) from the screen, and there're bg elements, objects, characters, etc. which will or will not cover up each other depends on their relative depths (walkbehinds, baselines, etc. )), this is different from ordinary text or static scene (though the scenes can be drawn in "3D", still) adventure games and you do "actions" in these games.
So according to their definition, the name 3D action adventure is completely valid, and I won't consider them wrong.

[Sylpher]

Right gilbert.. To agree and I hope somewhat expand what you said. Like I said before on a gameplay level they were very much 3d. The games 'felt' as if they had depth.

However on a technical side they were not. I read up on the Doom and Wolfenstein engines a very long time ago so the following information may not be completely accurate but I believe the ideas intact are correct.

Wolfenstein 3d adjusted 2d images using scale and rotation techniciques. Adjusting the images just right and insync with each other creates the feeling of 3 demensional depth. Images get further and closer based on your movement and you can rotate and look around a room.

However to be technically a true 3d engine it must be a completely structured system. As in it uses polygons or other contructs (their were more in the early days of 3d but I cannot recall any now.. polygons are the popular ones now anyways) to literally build 3d objects.

It isn't just the fact that the system uses sprites for the character models. Hell Half-Life 2 could use sprites.. it may not look impressive but the engine would still be 3d with 2d sprites running around in it.

Again I point out I have not studied on these matters in a very long time so anyone with deeper knowledge in the subject please correct any incorrectness I have. If memory holds though I do think the most part is correct.

[Femme Stab Mode >:D]

anyway i wonder if anyone knows an utility (game engine) that would allow me to make a simmiliar game myself.

Oke, I have a list of RPG engines with their pros and cons (heeey, let go of my throat!)

These are all 3rd person view, except sphere, which has first person capabilities.

Sphere:

Pros:
High resolution,has a built-in graphics editor, which is actually pretty good, can handle a large number of tiles, has a built-in java script-like language,overall awesome.

Cons:
Hard to learn to script, takes a long time to master.

Scenario RPG maker:

Pros:
NONE!
Well, you can rip the music from it if you want, adn I stole one picture from their sprite resource...

Cons:
Ugly, ugly, ugly! Not powerfull at all, the resolution is pathetic, it's interface programing, and it's terrible overall. The resolution is pathetic. DON'T touch.

RPG makers 2003/2000

Pros:
Popular, there are many resources and tutorials, the default battle systems are pretty nice, relatively simple interface coding. I use them ^_^

Cons:
Illeagaly translated, rm2k was translated by Don Migel and rm2k3 by RPGAdvocate (I don't really like Advo at all, he's a major jerk and a hypocrite). Rm2k3 is shunned in most rm2k communities. Time consuming, most games take 2 years and over to make. A lot of n00b games are made with these 2 engines, as they are easy to use but hard to master. The resolution is 320x240 and you can only import 256 colour BMP or PNG images.

RPG toolkit

Pros:
Totaly legal and freeware, has a large support community.

Cons:
Written in Basic, the bitch is awfully slow.

Verge:

Pros:
It's pretty fast from what I know, it's rather flexible.

Cons:
Old, hasn't got such a large support community as the other, newer engines.

OHRRPGCE

Pros:
I don't know, never used it. It's made for DOS but runs with windows too.

Cons:
I never used it! :p