Midtown Madness Style Game Possible?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Midtown Madness Style Game Possible?
| ||
| Hi, I'm relatively new to B3D, as well as the whole 3D concept for that matter. I do have an idea for a game however, but I have doubts if it would be possible to do in B3D. I would like to create a 3D world in a city, kind of like in Micorsoft's Midtown Madness etc. but with cartoon-style characters walking through 'town', not cars. Would this be possible? What tools should I best use for creating the objects etc? Any replies/ideas/feedback are very welcome! :-) Cheers, Ron |
| ||
| Ron, Blitz3D is designed for games. Any game is possible. It will take lots of planning, code, content, tools, and patience. I would stress planning, planning, and more planning. RiftDriver is an FPS Engine being designed with this motto in mind. By taking timeout to plan my design, I'm designing a high performance modular engine that will used for a variety of games. This will save lots of code, content, tools, and patience. |
| ||
| Hi. You should not underestimate the amount of work that is neccessary to achieve something like any of those AAA Titles out there, including most Microsoft Game Releases. You know, when you are the most rich guy in the world, you can hire a lot of talented people. And those companies HAVE the best people. The business is heavy. It is likely that you will not be able to produce something complex and perfect like those titles, simply because you have to do everything by your own. You have one advantage compared to them: with Blitz3D you have one of the fastest rapid development tools in your hands! There might be one or two features which are currently not yet possible in Blitz, but they are not really required to make a nice game. So with Blitz you can program a game in a pretty short time. But there is still the Design. That's a lot of work! You need: Buildings, Characters, Things (cars, trees, trashcans aso.), 2D Graphics for Menus, Sounds, Music and more. And everything must be yours, you have to be the copyright owner in the end. THere are 3 ways: Buy Media - from time to time you can find cheap models and other media which is useful for games. (Only buy stuff that can be used royalty free) Collect free Models and Media in the Web (make sure it's royalty free) Create Models and Media. (I use all 3 ways together) One thing is important: you need to learn what Models and Media is useful for games design, and what's not. For Models it is very important that they have a low number of Triangles. Bare in mind you shouldn't have more than maybe 50 Thousand Triangles total on screen. You will learn to handle this. I know some people tend to over-plan things and therefore they plan and plan since years and almost nothing is released. It's a good idea to have a plan, but it don't have to be extremly detailed. If your Plan.txt is longer then your game.bb then there's something wrong IMHO. I suggest make a rough plan, based on your skills and on what you think is possible. Then work the details out one by one. If your are completely new to blitz I hardly suggest to write some little games first to learn to know the language. This will save you from doing big mistakes in the main project. It will also give you a lot of practice that is required in a serious Project. And never hesitate to use Code and Snippets from the Code Archives. For 3D Design there are several tools, maybe you need to test them and see which one is best for you. There is Milkshape for Character Design. I think on the first look it's very user unfriendly, but when you go trough the beginner tutorials found on polycount.com, you can master it quickly and believe me, Milkshape can be used to make real professional Characters. For the Animation of the Characters I reccomend CharacterFX, it's cheap and it can export .B3D and .MD2. For the UV Mapping you can buy UltimateUnwrap3D, that's pretty cheap too and surely the best App in its Genre. This PRogram is a sequel of LithUnwrap, which still can be found as freeware (V.1.3!) but the new App (Ultimate Unwrap3D) is much better and as far as I know the only Program that can import and export .B3D Animations (along many other functions, of course). For the design of the buildings you might use other software. Try wings3D, freeware as well. And of course, if you have the money, use 3DStudio Max, Maya or Lightwave. For further free tools check this Portal out: http://www.3dlinks.com/links.cfm?categoryid=10&subcategoryid=94 (needs javascript) Feel free to try my playable Demos (CSP Engine). They are a product of the workflow I just described. ALthough I used Maplet and Decorator (both free too) for the buildings, maybe these two tools are more useful for indoor games. But theoreticly you could use them to make a number of buildings for a city too. Good luck! |
   |