Messages

Changes:
- now a script module called Ags3d
- with the same demo "game"
- basic sprite rotation
- editor can rotate multiple selected objects at once (around the largest object)
- key movement customization
- can turn on and off the 3d, the mouse look and the player movement independently
- tagging of objects, so you can easily identify an object in the room script
- can get the object or character being looked at

Needs
- documentation
- some comments, versioning in the module header
- ability to turn on and off the editor completely
- characters optionally follow ground height
- a "give me coordinates" ray cast option in the editor to make it easier to place objects
- user primitives?

Let me know what you think.
http://www.steporg.com/step/ags/games/ags3d.zip

The game communicates with the manual? That's an awesome idea!
Looks like it took you almost as long to make the manual as the game...

I can see it being useful, though it's getting very specialized.
It might be better to define angle ranges that each loop corresponds to. Then we could have:
left/right only animations
  -90 -> +90 = right
  +90 -> -90 = left
isometric animations
  0 -> +90 = up/right
  +90 -> +180 = up/left
  -180 -> -90 = down/left
  -90 -> 0 = down/right
flattened perspective animations (this seems to be how AGS works?)
  -60 -> +60 = right
  +60 -> +120 = up
  +120 -> -120 = left
  -120 -> -60 = down
top down animations
  -45 -> +45 = right
  +45-> +135 = up
  +135 -> -135 = left
  -135 -> -45 = down
6 way animations, 12 way animations, 16 way animations, and so on...

I realise this doesn't help you right now. Just thinking out loud.

New version:
Collisions with characters and objects.
Fixed a bug with impossible to sort situations of 3 or more overlapping primitives. Previously the game would crash, exceeding max loop iterations.
Added but didn't test 8-loop views.
Characters and objects can now have a separate baseline height. The sprite is moved down that many pixels.
Initial support for multiselect (shift-click) in the 3d editor. Movement (and colour I guess) works fine. You *can* scale and rotate multiple things but it's not recommended since it's not yet relative to the largest selected object.
http://www.steporg.com/step/ags/games/ags3d.zip

Well in C++ you can access protected members of existing objects from within member functions...which I need to be able to do something, yes...

No you can't. You can access an object's own protected members but not those of others. Protected is only useful for class heirarchies.
To access data from other objects of the same type, you have to create Get/Set functions, or make it public.
[EDIT] Oh, bloody hell, I'm talking bollocks again. Sorry monkey.

Anyway, I agree with Gilbot.

We can't really go changing the way it currently works I think, given that people have been working with the current implementation.

I don't see the problem with the way it is now anyway - does it stop you doing anything? These access specifiers are nice for shared code and libraries when working with large code bases, but not really necessary for single-author projects and sometimes I find slow down coding.
If you want to access a data member from within an object, make it "public". If you want to indicate (to yourself) that it's not supposed to be used outside the class, name it appropriately.

If it was to change, it would be sensible to use C++, C# or Java convention, rather than some arbitrary scheme. For example, your "protected" is not the standard way that protected works. Protected normally only confers access to the base class' data in a derived class.

Oh well, I tried.
Unfortunately I don't really have time to fix those last little issues.
Sorry 'bout dat.

Good luck!

Walmart is evil.
This story disturbs me in two ways:
- you would go over there and help them out when they called - on minimum wage?
- you would eat a pizza stick in a toilet stall. Ew.

Sorry to hear you lost your job.
What was wrong with the old place of employment (that you've gone back to)?

Somehow I doubt it.
You can't do much with it in any case.

Firstly in the bar if you go to the middle of the tables you can sorta get on top of them without jumping. I don't know if thats a bug or not.

Hmm, yeah. You mean if you jump into them and then walk forward a bit, and then you pop up on top? That's an artifact of the way I do collisions. I use a floating box that I collide in x-z plus a ray cast straight down to determine height. I think I'll leave it that way for now. I should probably fix it at some point - improve the interpenetrating collision case, make it a solid box, or collide the floating box in 3d.

The other thing is with the tilting up and down, the characters (well all sprites really) seem like they are coming towards you. Like the camera rolls forward and up as opposed to just tilting.

That's because I keep the feet fixed in position, rather than the centre point, so they don't look like they are sliding on the ground. There's not much I can do about it. Hmm, I could position them based on the feet and scale them based on their centre point... Thanks for making me think about it!

Cheers.

Ok!
Finally ironed out the known bugs in the sorting and collision.
Please let me know if you see anything odd.
Also sped up the triangle clipping - the "game" runs about 50% faster on average.

There are some situations when the sorting goes really slowly - lots of big close together objects - it's a good idea to break up the objects into smaller pieces in that case, or make them unsorted if they are walls, floor or ceiling and you know nothing will ever be behind them.

Get it here.

x2
x3

Check the BBCode and smileys reference (link above the edit message box when posting) for info on how to enlarge images and a bunch of other stuff.

Looks pretty darn good. I don't think the mouth is necessary. Maybe the limbs are all a bit short, or maybe that's what you were going for as a style? The back foot is a bit of a club.

I'm flattered by your correct spelling.

Shame I don't know your first name.

What is IGT? DT Graphics?
Things have changed since my O-levels TWENTY YEARS AGO! Waaah!

Awesomely pointless. I like it.

Whaddaya mean, pointless? One could easily make a game with this. With action sequences!

I'm not sure if the "falling into the void" bug has been mention. Happens to the left of the bar if you walk into the sky.

If you turn on the editor, you can see that the blocking objects don't fill that space. So it's not a bug. It's a feature

Occasionally walking directly backwards at spawn (after you press F10) would make you fall also.

Aye, one of the Schlaepfers mentioned that. It's another feature - the spawn point is inside the blocking object.

Why not just use "tiled sprite import" in AGS?

Look at the image - it's not regularly spaced.

AGS probably takes your Y position, subtracts the sprite height, and draws the sprite.
So for your example:

y = 37
h = 9
Draw at y-h = 37-9 = 28

Then it fills pixel rows 28-36.

Confusing, but predictable.
Might be dangerous to fix.
Probably needs a note in the manual.

I pressed 'I' and 'J' many times and somehow managed to fly.
Then it crashed.

Awesome stuff.

I can't quite tell if that's sarcastic - so I'm going to assume it's not
I and J are controls to place primitives, which you end up 'standing' on the lower polygons of, which raises you up into the sky. I didn't put any checking in place to limit the number of primitives in the scene, but the limit is 60 and when you exceed that, boom.

strazer, Ghormak: Cheers!

[EDIT] Found the collision bug. I forgot to update the test position after the first collision, so sometimes sliding along one object would move you through a second. That's why hitting the doorframe just before the wall (but in the same update)  took you through the wall. Doh!

I haven't updated the zip because I'm in the middle of debugging the sorting, which still doesn't work quite right. So it will still happen but there's no need to report it. Unless it wasn't from running into a "corner".

You called the dog Steve? Bastards!

Dang. Still a bug in the collision detection then.
I'll see if I can reproduce it.
I thought I managed to walk through a corner once. Guess it wasn't my imagination...