ISO Game in Flash, using Swift3D

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I've just a made quick calculation on how many bitmaps I will need...Well I am kind of shocked:


6(races) x 2(genders) = 12 bitmaps

12 x 24(iso views 8-standing, 8-crouching, 8-proning) = 288 bitmaps

Ok so far 288 bitamps just for 6 races, 2 genders, and 24 views in total - stand/crouch/prone. Now let's count walking animation. Let's assume all 8 views will have 10 frames for animation, or 10 bitmaps. Since animation in different position counts too it will be 24(views) x 10(frames) = 240 bitmaps.

240 + 288 = 520 bitmaps.

I don't know if it is a good idea or not, but I decided to show weapon in character's hand this way:
When you equip a weapon you will see .png with weapon in hands. In other words I will have to render character with all possible weapons (I know it's a big pain). That's hard and simple way to do it. Even if there is much faster way, like generating weapon in character's hands, it won't "work". You need totally new pose for that character. It's not the same as if you are holding or not holding the weapon in hands. Thus holding rifle will require a different view compared to holding a pistol.

Right now I have about 38 weapons for the game (both Melee and Ranged). So now imagine 38(weapons) x 520(bitmaps) = 19,760 bitmaps.... . And with each new weapon added to the game I will need to render another 520 bitmaps LOL. Yeah...funny.

Any suggestions/ideas on how to make it simplier and faster?

[EDIT]: Forgot to calculate 'melee fighting' calculation for special class. That's about 10 melee attacks with at least 20 frames/bitmaps each. So now we have 200 extra bitmaps just for one race and gender.

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[BlinkOk]

yeah. it's a big job ain't it?

[Abelius]

Wow! THose three images from weiweihua are simply AMAZING!!!!

[BlinkOk]

a bit of a postscript on this thread. here is an interview with the dudes that created dofus;
http://www.gotoandplay.it/spotLight/dofus/
i found this quote enlightening;

Q: How many animations were approximately drawn for each character?

More than 100 for each one; we have to consider that DOFUS is in 2D, we cannot benefit from the advantages of 3D designing. It is a huge task.

[syntax_error]

Thanks Blink.

It's been a while since my last post here. I was really busy with school and didn't have much time to spend in making this project.

Ok i have to point out something. Star Forge Online is not going to be MMORPG anymore. Here's why:

My friend convinced me to screw the whole MMORPG idea, and I won't finish it. I must agree with him, with no knowledge of ActionScript or C#/C++ I won't be able to make any code. He is 5 years in C++ and told me just how freaking hard it is to make game engine for MMORPG, it takes many years to make nice MMORPG for huge companies such as Sony Online Entertainment, Blizzard, etc. And it's considering that they have really good programming skills (talking about programers specifically).

I didn't want to scratch this whole idea either, or it would be a big waste of time. First thing I will do is making something really small, like interactive chat where people could walk around on the background and chat. Err, if I recall it's called 2D Isometric. The game however will contain 3D characters and items. Very good example is here - http://www.clubpenguin.com. I will try to make something similar from interactive chat, to mini MMORPG by adding new features time to time. Combat system will be the last one - if it will ever be.

S.F.O. will NOT be photo-realistic game with raster graphic. I decided it would be a better idea making it vector -- more cartoonish. The reason for that is because in vector game will be looking much smoother and more fun to play .

So, this way it will be much easier for me and it's the shortest way to reach MMORPG title, it would be just impossible to finish MMORPG alone with a friend. You need a whole bunch of professional coders and designers.

Later I will open my topic in Games forum here on FK, where I will keep track of all development progress and will post latest info.

Although I found a good website http://scifi3d.theforce.net/list.asp...10&intCatID=15 where I could look for Star Wars refference, such as buildings, characters, etc.

Somewhere next week I will ask my friend (Art Proff) to draw me a nice scene of a few buildings, which will be colored later in Photoshop. Look at that penguin game which I posted above to see what I mean. Once the graphic part is done I will work with AS. And there are lots of scripts and documentation on all this.

Wish me luck to succeed in this. Like I said I will open a topic later in Games forum, so stay tuned!

[BlinkOk]

good luck syntax dude. if you look over at www.gotoandplay.it they have an iso chat system there as well