Been away quite a while

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/Been away quite a while

Rhodan(Posted 2008) [#1]
Its been a few years since I played with Blitz3D and I'm wondering how things have shaped up?

My main reason for getting blitz was to make a MORPG (multiplayer, not massive mulitplayer) with the aim of letting a group of friends have their own private little MORPG experience.

I never needed the newest and bestest graphics, hell, we all loved Meridian59 and even went back to play for a bit on NearDeath Studios revival. We'd probably have kept playing except that game is aimed at PvP while we're strictly PvE types.

What would people recommend as good and (fairly) current tools to accomplish this? I've already stumbled across treeparty (WOW!) and tried out TED again (bought it waaay back) and was quite impressed with V6. While I'm searching around and trying demos it'd be great to get some tips on good things to look at.

I remember my biggest stumbling block being 3D character models with suitable animations. Psionic was making some good demo models (dwarf or something?) but I was poor back then and couldn't commission a set. Are there any "packs" of 3D characters (all human would be fine but it'd be nice to get some dwarves and elves in there too).

The second biggest problem was figuring out how to handle the world map in a client-server model. I'm happy using "zones" but couldn't see how to use multiple terrain objects in the server. I'd also be happy to use some form of continuous world map but couldn't figure out how handle that either. I'm hoping maybe someone has designed a system or created a tutorial on how to use more than one terrain object or how to do multiple zones kind of thing. TED does multi-maps but I haven't the foggiest idea how to utilize them.

I also don't need "free" stuff only and would be happy to purchase things as long as they aren't crap (the tools for RealmCrafter, like "megaterrains" come to mind - total waste of money even if they were a pittance).

Network code I did pretty well with though "efficient" wouldn't apply to what I had cobbled together. I see a few feature rich network examples kicking around now that look pretty good.

Anyway, lets hear what you folks think would be good things to use! I should say though that simplicity is more important to me than feature count.

Thanks!


WERDNA(Posted 2008) [#2]
Blender is a pretty good 3D animation tool.

You can get it at www.blender.org and I'm pretty sure that its free.

I don't know about the other things that your looking for, but

I wish you luck with those, and welcome back to Blitz 3D.

The Juicy WERDNA(Simply Blend, and Serve)