3d game development

[Joshua Worth]

Myst, Riven and the Journeyman project are good 3D games in a 2D environment, but Myst took a couple of years to make with 7 people, and Riven took 4 years to complete with a very big group of people(and even a 3d designer from Disney!)

[saabian]

otherwise you can create a fps shooter like the flash games "flash strike", halflife 2 mayhem etc. that could be nice.

[DocRabbit]

Actually, there are really no True 3D games for the common market, since they are all displayed on 2D devices. Although they are working on them I am sure, and the immersion market has brought it a lot closer to being actual 3D.

Please don't flame me for saying this, but it is true. Just like everyone's computer at the end of the day is really a souped up calculator with a 0 and 1 key. Which, after all, makes it truly just a very expensive light switch.

[Oman]

very true doc... but i like things to me a little more complex than 10010011101011101, thats no fun

[DocRabbit]

Oh how some days I wish they were that easy...

I have used GE to make a 3D viewer of early renders of 3D objects. It actual does very well for that purpose. Although coming in at around 21 megs an executeable for a camera rotation in 360 degrees with one animated actor and a couple of text actors and an exit button might show that anything extensive would be huge.

Reversing the animation, even in a file this size was still extremely smooth though.

*UPDATED* - Here is a link to it.
http://www.speedyshare.com/745294176.html

[Oman]

cool. howd you do it?

[Troodon]

:idea: Maybe it would be possible to create some kind of "point and click" game, you know like old "atlantis", "myth" or "amerzone". You simply add an actor with a animation (a big picture of a hallway or something) that is in full screen size.
Then with your mouse, by pressing a special point of the picture the animation will change to another picture of the same room but some footsteps forward, if you get what i mean.

Maybe the picture of the animation could change everytim you press forward arrow/backward arrow (key down).

This is might a god start hehe

In fact this could work easily if the view just changes every time you change room. Then you could even have a shooter game where your enemies move in one room which is activated with activation region. You could shoot the enemis, read papers, have a look on a map, point a lamp to a dark corner...but you couln'd not work towards the bodies. You would just click for the next room. It could become a cool game.

[Fuzzy]

Oh how some days I wish they were that easy...

I have used GE to make a 3D viewer of early renders of 3D objects. It actual does very well for that purpose. Although coming in at around 21 megs an executeable for a camera rotation in 360 degrees with one animated actor and a couple of text actors and an exit button might show that anything extensive would be huge.

Reversing the animation, even in a file this size was still extremely smooth though.

You must be going at it wrong.

The development of games like Doom and Castle Wolfenstein were revolutionary in that you went from 3d perspective games like Wizardry and Heros Quest, which spanned 4-12 diskettes to castle wolfenstein, which fit on just one. The jump to 3D, or 2.5D actually reduced the sizes of games. I think Doom 1.0 fit on 3-4 3.5 inch disks.

A later example, Myst, took up a whole CD-ROM, or more. Its size suffered because it was not rendered on the fly, and caching of visual elements and composting them to completed scenes wasnt possible.

A modern online example would be Eve online, or star wars Galaxies. Eve is over 150 megs in size, if i recall, and SWG is about 4 CD roms.

On the other hand an online world like Second Life is a 30 meg client. All the textures and other things are streamed live(because they are player created).

The point? A good 3D renderer is rather small and simple. Its the effects and display elements that take up mondo space. A good example is say lightwave verses POV-Ray. Lightwave is huge, and POV is only 30 megs.

Here is doom one... and its 2.9 megs. http://takegame.com/shooter/htm/doom1.htm

It MIGHT only be the first level, I never checked, but the point is that the whole rendering engine is there.

[d-soldier]

The first DOOM .wad file was 10megs, which was a huge file at the time... this is what contained all the sprites and such... so I think thats just the demo, or the wad compresses really well maybe...