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[Jeroen]

Hi there fellow WME-ers!

I've been quite absent after the Scumbag Joe debacle which demotivated us for a while. But we're back in business with lots of ideas for a new adventure game.

This time we're thinking of a full 3D game (smaller in story size, mid-priced game). We've been noticing two important requests from publishers and interested parties:

- "We want 3D"
  The reason: people have LCD monitors nowadays, showing an incredible variety of screen resolutions.
  With bitmap backgrounds, this will not look pretty.
  Also, slight 3d camera panning gives the game a great look and feel, and zooming in when
  the character has a dialogue (Sam 'n Max) is not much work in 3d, but for 2d you have
  to (re)render a new scene. Also, when you want a slight different angle, in WME you'll need to
  re-edit your whole scene, including static foreground objects.
 
  The bottom line: WME seems to be "almost feature complete": it has 3d characters, shadows,
  the whole shebang.

  Basicly what we would need is to use a 3D object as environment
  and define child objects in this 3D scene (clickable in scene edit) as a regular WME object.
  Camera panning would be same as scrolling now, except when you want
  to turn the camera and such, the user could implement a custom script that handles this.
  (e.g turnCamera(pitch,yaw,roll) based on character location).
 
  Lastly, it would be nice to be able switch camera's.
  (E.g cameras are defined in 3dsmax like now).
  When you have a dialogue or cutscene, you simply call ActiveCamera(myCam);
  The interface (2d) could simply be a bitmap, not scaling with the screen resolution.
  Just like now, but ignoring the resolution it is being displayed on.

- Cross Platform
  Although I think this is increasingly getting important, it is a thing we could live with.
  The interpreter, compiler could be ported (porting the tools would be huge), but I can
  imagine its a b*tch to transform DirectX code to OpenGL?
  However, the Mac platform is very interesting. Not much games exist for this relative small target
  audience. They are willing to buy games quite easily (this has been researched by some publishers).

Phew...Sorry for the long post.
What are your thoughts on this?

I think WME is *awesome* and there is no adventure based engine that comes close to WME.
Implementing 3D environments would make WME perfect.
I understand the fear that the user base want advanced 3D stuff and WME becomes a bloated
engine, but perhaps it is possible to adapt existing technology (rendered) and provide advanced
3d stuff through some kind of external script API? Or....?

[Mnemonic]

Fellow WME-ers don't seem to care, as usual.

[odnorf]

We care, we care!

Automatic answer: We have talked about those two wishes (real-time 3D & cross platform) at the #wme channel many times before. Last time Mnemonic almost attacked a bot. 

Conclusion: AFAIK it won't happen before wme v666 or else Mnemonic has plans to take over the world and he is hiding them from me.

[Nihil]

As both of them would mean huge changes to the core of WME my fear would be that they lead to instability and a myriad of bugs - I don't know if this two features would be worth that? Maybe as a different development-branch, but I guess Mnemonic wouldn't like that idea too much :-)

So, as much as I would like to have especially multi-platform-abilities, I would renounce them in favour of WMEs rock-solid stability. But in case that wouldn't be a problem I'd say: Go for it :-) And then I think cross-platform is more important than 3d stuff.

[Daniel]

Fellow WME-ers don't seem to care, as usual.

I'm usually silent here but to say that I don't care would be very, very far from the truth!

Anyway, good to see you're back Jeroen, I appreciated your work on Project Joe very much.

[metamorphium]

My standpoint is clear. It would be wonderful to have all these features, but right now I am concentrating hard on delivering my little side project so WME has one more game completed. Why all that features when nobody is practically using them? So as soon as I will be limited by WME, I'll join the mourn-for-3d.

And with 3d the game creation will become even much more complicated.

[Mnemonic]

I'm usually silent here but to say that I don't care would be very, very far from the truth!

Unfortunately it's hard to tell what people think as long as they remain silent.
Oh well, but that's a general problem of this community, most people are only posting when they need something, no interest in other things, no interest in helping the others.. Luckily there are a few honorable exceptions, kudos to them!

[metamorphium]

well, sometimes the problem boils down to simple reluctance to use the forum search function or entering the wiki.

[Jeroen]

Sorry to have stirred up this ... stuff :-)

I understand WME will need to be enhanced, perhaps in a way that Jan seems to be not worthwile.
Only Jan knows what's to be changed under the hood.
There are some arguments I'd like to point out though:

- full 3d is inevitable. WME's "longlivity" is, IMHO, based on full 3D support.
  This does not mean 2.5D or 2D games are now out of the picture. They have their
  own characteristics. They will be used the upcoming years.
  We at Sticky Studios love 2D (Scumbag Joe proves that :-) but things are changing
  very rapidly. The market asks for it.

- WME is halfway there. It has reached "the point of no return" :-P
  It is the first adventure specialised engine that has 3D character support.

- I don't think a pixelshaders and advanced stuff it neccessary. But, perhaps it is possible
  to adapt existing render technology in WME and simply say: "hey, if you want fancy stuff,
  check out www.theadvancedrender.com for the API".
  Because I think Jan is right when he says: "I add 3d, and whats next?"
  This will keep things managable.

- We're not targeting advanced doom3 effect stuff. No one of us has the team and money
  for those kind of scenes anyway. If so, I would personally say:
  "go write your engine" or "license another engine".
  Basic 3d with some bells and whistles is enough.

- It makes your adventure easier to sell.
  Believe me, it does :-)
  Which is good for the community, for WME and for world peace!

- Faster development and smaller resources.
  No more hundreds of frames, but 3D models,
  You can switch a camera to zoom in or focus on another part, and you'll still
  only have to design one room!
  There are also much more 3D specialists than 2D specialists.

Jan: I'm not sure, after reading the posts above, that I should shut up about this, or not :-( If so, sorry.

[Daniel]

Oh well, but that's a general problem of this community, most people are only posting when they need something, no interest in other things, no interest in helping the others.

Well, I can't say for the rest here but in my case it only comes down to being too much of a novice and out-of-practice with WME - something that would change greatly the moment I actually start using WME...

But as I see it, and I could be wrong, WME is a more professional engine than other engines out there and as such, it is more pro-oriented. We all know that pro's usually have considerably less time on their hands to keep visiting the engine's forum in order to assist the others so they usually come in only when in need of assistance themselves. The case is very different with engines that are more fan-oriented where people do things just for fun and hanging out in the forums helping others is a kind of a fun activity for them.

That said, even with the large AGS community, the ones giving the greater share of the assistance are only a handful, as I remember it.

(Sorry Jeroen for the hijack, though I'm just following previous hijackers  )

[Jeroen]

No problem there
But, could we discuss the contents of the actual post?

[leucome]

Ok maybe i will say something unexpected. It is already possible to build a realtime 3d scene in wme only by exporting the scene as an actor an loading it in a scene. (ok more that one actor for a complete scene) In fact the only thing needed is a moving camera ...

[Jeroen]

That sound like a hacky, but still interesting.
But, this "actor" is placed in a layer, and is not a real "scene", in the sense
that it does not care about Z-ordering.
Let's say this 3d entity is the scene itself containing a couple of buildings
and a tree in the foreground.
Currently in WME the whole object would be rendered BEHIND the character
or IN FRONT.
The actual 3D object should be the scene itself, not just a layer.

[leucome]

The layer seem to be used only to order 2d sprite because it is not 3d, i think ...hehe   When we use a 3d actor like a big castle it use the normal 3d z buffer i think ...  OK i do not realy know how the engine handle it but 3d object are alway ordered  in good way on the test scene i done.  ...

[metamorphium]

Warning! This post has turned into very personal opinions so please take it as one. Warning ends!

I think it's too hackish. I would wait for the real 3d support in WME since then it will be really well implemented judging by the quality of the rest of the engine. This goes out of discussion and in the future I believe, that quality engine like WME will have it implemented. Still given the unquestionable quality of WME engine, how comes, there is such a little ammount of games finished?

I have the following theory on this and maybe you'll realize it actually IS connected to this thread. WME is professional tool very much comparable to AAA engines like Virtools. Given its price, it's accessible for everyone and given its functionality it has now, it invites people to create HUGE, shiny games full of bells and whistles. And there's the pitfall. Huge games require teams and teams require funding. So basically the most of those teams just fall apart since the funding is nowadays not that easy to get.

I think that AGS has one advantage over WME. It attracts hobby coders in a sense of making little projects. If you run WME for the first time and see the plethora of possibilities you usually go "wow, I could make syberia easily in this engine". But "syberias" are not done easily in any engine, because there's much more to the game than just the engine.

So WME (the same as pseudo swiss cheese) is innocent, but sometimes it would be nice to see some little project which doesn't try to enter the evil "commercial level" quality. There were projects like this in the past (Dead City, Sofia's debt, 7 lethal daemons) or longer projects like The White Chamber or very long 5MA. I miss seeing small projects announcements nowadays.

And finally what does this all having to do with Jeroen's first post? Well, let's suppose, Mnemonic will implement shiny new 3d engine with all bells and whistles so you will go "wow, now I can make Sam'n'Max with WME". Does this mean you will actually make a game? Or will there be another bunch of on hold projects which (IMO) aren't very motivating for the engine creator.

I personally think, that what we're given to play with here is a very strong tool which can be really creatively used. And I think that as the time passes the pit between "commercial Source engine like things" and "independent games" will grow bigger and bigger. I personally feel like remaining at the independent level with accent to creativity and originality than trying to surpass the huge sharks with million dollars funding.

So just to write more about my previous short post.