Just thought of a feature which would really rule. Why not allow 3d dungeons (Eye of the Beholder, Warriors of the Eternial Sun, Dungeon Master II). What do people think about that?
I have been thinking of writing such an engine myself but I don't really have the time. It would be quite easy to code I think since it isn't real 3d.
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I think he was thinking of pseudo first person view, such as is found in the might & magic rpgs (at least the early ones - I only have 1 & 2), or in some of the dungeons in Realmz.
Personally, while I think it makes a kind of nifty gimmick, it (imo) probably isn't a good format to build a game in. Very easy to get lost, since it is almost impossible to avoid haveing lots of places that look exactly alike. From what I've read about coldstone, it would be theoretically possible to do something like that, but it would probably require an enourmous amount of effort.
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Originally posted by Wyvern:
**I think he was thinking of pseudo first person view, such as is found in the might & magic rpgs (at least the early ones - I only have 1 & 2), or in some of the dungeons in Realmz.
**
Okay I'd say Realmz is a bad example but yes Coldstone (well the screenshots I've seen so far) Are quite interesting, I've never seen better detailed scenery on an RPG, not even on my Dreamcast or PS2
(If only Ambrosia could give Realmz a good going over like Coldstone I'd buy it)
(And by "it" I mean realmz, hinthint* ;))
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(This message has been edited by Madman (edited 01-12-2001).)
Yes, I was meaning a (stepbased, pseudo 3d) 1st person view. And it is not a bad idea for gaming design. One of the best CRPG ever on this earth "Crusader of the Dark Servant" (from the wizardy series) was entirely in this pseudo 3d perspective.
I know there has been atempts in for example Realms to incorporate that view. Realms didn't do this well.
A dungeon doesn't have to look the same... just change the walls or the geometry of the dungeon. Like in 1st person shooters you can make both good and bad level design.
By the way I think that the fun of beeing in a dungeon is that you don't know where you are exactly and that you have to be careful so that you don't get lost.
The kind of RPG I would design would have a Ultima like view outdoors and 3d dungeons for most indoor scenes. Just like Warriors of the Eternial Sun for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
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Hmm, I've seen older games than realmz, that have had 3D first person view, mostly based on squares, though it adds a better feel for the charicter(s) and is even better when combined with roaming monsters that attack at will instead of random encounters/fight that one and only that one until it's dead.
In Dungeon Master II, the game I'm refering to, monsters can gang up on you or trap you and swat you to death (one good point of that game was that there were some monsters that you were suposed to avoid rather than evade, making it a challenge to avoid them while still gathering quest items from their lair)
Another advantage to a first person view would be traps. If you're walking to fast and not paying attention, you could stumble right onto a bed of nails and shred up your feet. Also, it would make it easier to "hide" rare items, that would normaly be in plain view, but must be searched out.
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Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System had step-based 3D dungeons. They ruled. PS also had some great music for the time.
You can probably fake these in Coldstone, I can think of two different ways that might work, but they'd be ultra-time consuming to implement and would take up a lot of disk space and memory. Besides, I couldn't imagine wanting to do things that way after playing with the, uh, erm, well, uh, I just wouldn't.
Coldstone isn't a 3D engine, though, and let's not encourage feature creep. If Dee were to somehow implement Realmz/Phantasy Star/Might & Magic/Ultima Step Dungeons, pretty soon we'd be asking for all sorts of fancy add-ons to that system and then Coldstone would never see the light of day.
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Yes, but Myst is "screen-based", not "map-based", if you understand what I mean. All of its areas were prerendered, not generated on the fly like a "3d dungeon" would presumably be.
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Right, With some clever manipulation of locations, events, and quicktime movies, you could probably fake a 3-D step dungeon. Like I said, it would be a pain to implement and require a lot of disk space.
It might be neat if Coldstone had an API to allow third parties to add stuff like this, but that would take a lot of work. There are only so many hours in a day, and I'd rather not see feature creep hit.
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Originally posted by sanehatter:
**Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System had step-based 3D dungeons. They ruled. PS also had some great music for the time.
You can probably fake these in Coldstone, I can think of two different ways that might work, but they'd be ultra-time consuming to implement and would take up a lot of disk space and memory. Besides, I couldn't imagine wanting to do things that way after playing with the, uh, erm, well, uh, I just wouldn't.
Coldstone isn't a 3D engine, though, and let's not encourage feature creep. If Dee were to somehow implement Realmz/Phantasy Star/Might & Magic/Ultima Step Dungeons, pretty soon we'd be asking for all sorts of fancy add-ons to that system and then Coldstone would never see the light of day.
**
Pseudo 3D dungeons a la Realmz wouldn't have to use much of either disk space or memory. The present implementation in Realmz requires less than 400k bytes for all the graphics @ 8 bit color depth. One could spruce up the graphics, use 16 bit color and add more object(s) detail and still be under 1 Mb increased storage/memory requirements to have similar in Coldstone without 'feature creep'. It might not be as easy to implement in Coldstone as in Realmz however. ...I can't elaborate...
I agree that we should not promote 'feature creep', but quite often mere 'tweaking' can produce results/effects that are of the 'butterfly effect' type... Results orders of magnitude greater than the input.
I enjoy and find interesting all the references posted to this list made to 'console games'. But it is my humble opinion that 'computer games' are of a totally different genre and being such, console games and their audience are not necessarily fruitful for us to attempt to emulate or appeal to.
Coldstone will allow us to 'create' computer games which can be far more creative to play than console games. The Microsoft X-Box, apparently being more 'computer' than 'console' might the the first exception to this.
Peace.
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