Re: Status of xfire. Client/server 3d.

["tuan (t.) doan" <>]

In message "Re: Status of xfire. Client/server 3d.", 
'' writes:

>On Sun, 9 Oct 1994, Mark Wedel wrote:
>
>>  Also, handling a client/server version of 3D would be a lot different
>> than the 2D model.  Also, 3D would require rewrites in major portions
>> of the code.
>
>The 3D is question of work. Question of can we get enough people
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>to program and expecially draw things and coordinate the work.

   Well, isn't everything?  I think you might mean, tidious-simple
boring drawing work :-)

>In 3D games (Doom, Ufo, Wolf3D, Ultima 7, etc.) the monsters
>and items are drawn separately from diffferent directions in
>differing situations.
>
>Thinking one monster, goblin. Goblin can walk 8 directions
>in square grid, and the the walk goblin can have 2 image
>states. When hitting goblin have 1 image state as well as
>when hitted. So the number of images per monster is
>
>	8 * (2 + 1 + 1) = 32 images

   Hmm...How about using left/right flip operation and texture
mapping (due to symmetry) to reduced it down to 16.

>and there are 167 archetypes that have monster flag, so for
>monster there are needed
>
>	167 * 32 = 5344 images
>
>And the other items and walls needs 8 images per direction
>as well, and there are about 1000 other than monster arhetypes,
>that makes 8000 images, so total we need draw
>
>	5344 + 8000 = 13344 images

   Wall and _most_ items can be texture mapped.

>by skilled 3D cabable people co-operating. And if thinking
>one image takes 20 mins, then time for all images is 4448 hours,
>556 8-hour workdays, that means about 2-3 man-years. 

   Well, nobody said that it all had to be done all at once.  How
many monsters does it takes to allow a good game?  How many monsters
are there in DOOM or WOLF3D?

>The number of archetypes could be reduced, but I think it's
>not about the idea. The best in crossfire (and other roguelike
>games) the variety of items & monsters, I think.

   Actually no, rogue/hack monsters are using alphabet to represent
them (sometime with overlapped).  With about 26*2 upper and lower
case letter and let say that the overlapped are twice as much, we 
get about 26*2*2 ~ 100.  Items are mostly characteristic changes
rather than visual changes.  How many ways can one draw a sword?
I rather see some sort of image organization to allow the creation
of a unique item by using components overlay.  Example, a drawing
of a flame can be overlay with a sword and then dynamically create
a bitmap to represent a flaming sword.

>
>-- <A HREF="http://www.lut.fi/~hevi/">The Page</A> --
>

Regards,

 __  __/  /   /   __  /    |   /    Tuan T. Doan
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