Re: Status of xfire. Client/server 3d.

[Petri Heinila <hevi@lut.fi>]

On Tue, 11 Oct 1994, tuan (t.) doan wrote:

> >The 3D is question of work. Question of can we get enough people
>            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >to program and expecially draw things and coordinate the work.
> 
>    Well, isn't everything?  I think you might mean, tidious-simple
> boring drawing work :-)

Yeah :)

> >In 3D games (Doom, Ufo, Wolf3D, Ultima 7, etc.) the monsters
> >and items are drawn separately from diffferent directions in
> >differing situations.
> >
> >Thinking one monster, goblin. Goblin can walk 8 directions
> >in square grid, and the the walk goblin can have 2 image
> >states. When hitting goblin have 1 image state as well as
> >when hitted. So the number of images per monster is
> >
> >	8 * (2 + 1 + 1) = 32 images
> 
>    Hmm...How about using left/right flip operation and texture
> mapping (due to symmetry) to reduced it down to 16.

Then there come the question of different tools, like 3D studio
or Real 3D and other ray-tracing tools, that might help the
work somewhat, but the 32 is the worst case.

> >by skilled 3D cabable people co-operating. And if thinking
> >one image takes 20 mins, then time for all images is 4448 hours,
> >556 8-hour workdays, that means about 2-3 man-years. 
> 
>    Well, nobody said that it all had to be done all at once.  How
> many monsters does it takes to allow a good game?  How many monsters
> are there in DOOM or WOLF3D?

In case you want to use current maps it have to. But it seems
anyway it in 3D would be CrossFire3D, because there is needed
to add some info to maps to supply good 3D, like vertical info,
in case of low stairs.

> >The number of archetypes could be reduced, but I think it's
> >... 
>    Actually no, rogue/hack monsters are using alphabet to represent
>... 

I meant to say here the idea is in roguelike games that there
are many monsters that behave in many ways, that makes the
game interesting. And I think the monster behavior is at least
important than the visual appearing.

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