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Re: Introductions
KANE Aaron wrote:
1)The map is isometric clon of SimCity except there is no pre-set size limit.
...with modern graphics cards - why restrict yourself to isometric? Render stuff properly
in perspective...at least as an option. This will help you to look different from Civilisation - which
you seem hardly any different from right now.
I would really like to open this comment up to the list....
The decision for isometric was a result of the looks of fear and panic on my developers faces when we estimated the work load of
doing other types of modeling...
Well, if they think they are going to be able to paint (as 2D sprites say) every single building
and unit at at least a couple of different scales - with consistent shadowing, lighting and shading
- from at least four viewpoints - then I'd say they were crazy. You'll spend the rest of your life
worrying about why the flags on the turrets of the medieval castle are blowing the wrong way when it's
rotated 180 degrees - or why the cottage has light coming from the right when the adjacent farmhouse is
lit from the left.
Artists building these things these days tend to build them in 3D and render them in a decent ray-tracer
to make consistent images from all needed directions and sizes.
I don't think people are building these things a pixel at a time anymore.
Given that they work that way anyway, it's not a huge deal to toss those very same models into a REALTIME renderer
so you can have completely free movement in and around the model, spin it smoothly (even in isometric mode) and
get away from the 'four views' thing. It also somewhat allows you to escape the horrible angular look of the terrain,
roads and waterways that is imposed using a rigid gridded sprite representation.
I just **HATE** the square lakes and stair-step fijords in Civilisation for example. I hate the unnatural road
patterns you get in Sim City.
None of that is necessary if you are using textured polygons.
Also, when it comes to rendering beautiful 3D cut-scenes, title screens and other stuff, having all of your
resources already in 3D will give you much more flexibility and consistency of design.
When it comes to animating the cavemen and space-marines, working in 3D is much easier than painting hundreds
of sprites - four for every step of the animation if it can be viewed from four different directions.
If your artists aren't comfortable with building all of these things in 3D - then I'd say you already have a
very serious artwork problem. If they *are* comfortable to do that for the purposes of feeding a raytracer to
make static sprites - then they shouldn't care very much whether you plan to render them in realtime instead.
I personally would prefer to take your recommendation... For the very reason you suggested... However, I have
> found too many projects in my background research that attempted to build a OpenGL game and spent 100% of the
> effort lost in the modeling and never really got much of a game.
But your skills are in managing such projects - right?
So do your job and manage it.
---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjbaker1@airmail.net> WorkEmail: <sjbaker@link.com>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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