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Hey JAT, I bet your'e one of those persons who buys a game if it has a naked chick on the cover. Well call me silly, but I still think the game itself is more important than zooming-functions, 3d-effects, cool intros etc. I don't care if a game sells 10 million copies if it's not playable. |
Careful now, Magog. I'm not one of those guys who buys a game, or any product, because it has a chick on the box. In fact, it counts against such a product, because I regard such advertisement as an insult to my intelligence. I'm far too cynical to indulge in such petty pleasures.
The thing is, AoW2 needs more than just good gameplay: if the game is going to sell it NEEDS, great gameplay, great gfx, AND great sound fx and music. TBS is a niche in the games market. And fantasy TBS, is such an obscure little niche you couldn't find with a microscope. A niche, AoW has to share with games like HoMM, that however much some of us here dislike it, is still similar to AoW.
No, AoW2 is going to need ALL the bells and whistles and then again good advertisement and a lot of luck, to become a succes. Gamers, these days, are a spoiled lot, and that is quite understandable, given all the quality games that flood the market these days. Good is simply not enough.
Remember that ALL the members of this forum and the life-line, buying the game, are not enough to cover the costs of making such a game. Now, WE, we are the 'fans', and even if you and some other people here would buy the game if only it has great gameplay, many here do want great gfx.
I'm one of the latter group. I've got a nice PC (and a horrible OS too) and I like games to make use of that hardware I spent so much hard-earned money on. I've got a fully functional copy of the original AoW, and frankly, I don't see why I should go for AoW2 if it wasn't significantly better; AoW1 may be old, but I still like it. Now I'd probably buy AOW2 even if it didn't have direct3d bells and whistles, but only if the gameplay would truly blow my socks off, and take a leg aswell. What I really want is for AoW2 to be so stunning it takes my leg off, tears my eardrums AND makes me blind. (Landmines are sooo inpractical, and you can do that only once...twice, maybe)
So, to make it short, I'm happy with the efforts going into the gfx, because AoW2 needs it.
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I remember Josh said that AoW 2 will still be primarily 2d (a matrix that represents the 2d map and no height is involved) and so camera angle won't work very well (imagine units lying down on the grass while they move in a bird's view!!). Rotation is something we see in SimCity 2000, which is primarily 2d, too. Zooming in and out is easy and doesn't matter whether it's 2d or 3d, if you always zoom the rendered image, which is always 2d because the screen is 2d. |
Frenchkisser (You still have that same old nick? I thought you said you were going to change it...),
The reason AoW2 won't have different camera angles is that the units and trees and cities are 2d sprites. 2d sprites work good only if you look at the same angle at them. But you may still change the viewpoint, as long as the movement is only translation within the defined space.
The landscape is 3d. But 3d like in the settlers. There is height involved alright: the landscape is made up of many polygons, and could technically be viewable from all angles. Actually, if josh, does this right, the 2d sprikes are also drawn like a flat 3d surface, but with the normal always in the opposite direction of the camera angle. Zooming is then quite easy: just translate the camera to move forward in the direction it is facing. Note that sim2000 is actually 3d, as there are 3 coordinates needed for objects, but it is shown isometrically. From what I've seen of AoW screenshots, it will not be isometric, but actually rendered. This is quite possible, even with 2d sprites. While for true realism you'd need 3d models, 2d sprites will actually work, and still look good: think of Doom.
Consider a cube that moves from the left of the screen to the right: first you see the front and the left side, then just the front, and then the front and the right, even though the cube still faces in the same direction. This also works in a way for a cube, or any shape moving away from the camera, while not precisely in front of it. And also for vertical movement. However, for some viewpoints, it doesn't look too bad when this does not happen and the shape remains the same. This is because the change is then actually relatively small, and imagination makes up for the lack. Remember IDs Doom and all it's clones again.
Actually, change of camera angle also may work if you make enough different bitmaps for the sprites to be seen at, say, 8 angles,(Doom again) but it doesn't work quite as good as just translation.
Some of the advantages of a 3d landscape instead of isometric are still there:
*Firstly it looks better, because the landscape itself remains perspectively correct. The flaws of isometric views of an environment are far more noticeable than slightly incorrect 2d representations of the (smaller) objects within a true 3d environment.
*Secondly, modern graphic cards these days render so fast it is actually faster to render 3d than to draw the isometric view.
*Thirdly, you get to use texture maps on the polygons, which looks much more slick than simple scaleable bitmaps. Remember the zoom function.
*Finally, it allows for a far more precise 3d world, as isometric views must be build up from uniform blocks. The 3d landscape, however, can be a fine 3d mesh.
Hoorah!
Steel Monkey