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Re: [pygame] Where Do I Go From Here?

Hello

After so many already wrote you I throw my 2 cents in: You gained a lot of 3D experience already and you dont feel well to create a RPG game like Zelda. IMHO your feeling is telling you right. Head to a 2D engine. I assume you want to create the game in the old style looking Zelda games, what means working with a kinda bird view perspective. A additioinal editor would allow you to create a very detailed world, that would probably harder than in 3D. The depth of such games is based on the paintings. Analyze some screenshots of such games and you will see how they are bringing colors in. A good manual is shown at: http://www.zoggles.co.uk/asp/tutorials.asp?tut=17&comments=yes (click on chapters below Contents). Its quite impressive what can be done by graphics. ;)

A 2D engine for such game types offers you some advantages:
- Easy extendsible world by creating/adding new graphic objects by the editor
- Get rid of 3D complexity
- 2D painted areas still look better/more cute than 3D objects covered by bitmaps
- 2D objects are easier to move/animate in Pygame
- No additional engine needed (well you have to create it then)
- Keep focused on AI, story etc. after 2D engine is written (you only need to create the world then, based on your story, quests, etc.)
- Animation of water, windmills, weather effects, etc. is a nice addon to give more game depth

A big "addict" factor of such games is based on the graphics (next to story and quests) and people will like/play it when that factor is eye catching. ;)

If you still experience slow area movement you can think of only displaying a part of the whole area. If the area is left you can display the adjacent area of the left area. If you dont care Python/ Pygame usage (how dare you! ;) ) you might use existing game engines like the one of garagegames, etc.

Greetiings
Farai


Am 04.12.2006 um 13:20 schrieb Kris Schnee:

Many questions here; I could use help from someone more experienced.

http://kschnee.xepher.net/pics/061204scurvy.jpg
This is my latest work: "Scurvy," an OpenGL 3D landscape system, hooked up to the procedurally-generated island stuff I've been working on, controlled by Pygame. For comparison, the underlying "worldsim" is also hooked up to a pure-Pygame graphics engine, seen here:
http://kschnee.xepher.net/pics/061201ship.jpg
And a past 3D engine whose look I actually like ("Pearl") is here:
http://kschnee.xepher.net/pics/shiningsea060624-1.png

But what now? Although I could and probably should focus on the
"worldsim" itself -- the physics and gameplay -- I'm not sure about how
to develop the graphics system further. Assuming that I can successfully
combine this landscape with my Pygame-only widget system and with
Pyglyph so that I can do text windows, buttons etc., it's still going to
be ugly! I thought about switching from these awkward-looking textures
to plain colors, but (perhaps because there's full lighting) that turns
the landscape into green soup. And there's still a bad case of the
jaggies (and terrible FPS) from the fact that I'm using 100x100 data
points. _And_ the sky's not animated. And so on.

So, as a lone developer, is it even worth trying to do this 3D system?
My goals are:
-To have a Zelda-like action RPG (single-player!),
-With complex gameplay and AI (starting very simply and building what I
can),
-In a game world with islands and a few villages, caves etc..

That means I don't need full 3D -- but also want something that looks
good enough that I can show it to people and not repulse them.

My reasoning is:
-That bad 3D is worse than good 2D;
-But that a 2D system would need scrolling and has trouble portraying depth;
-That Pygame scrolls slowly (I'm getting just 15 FPS on my non- scrolling 2D engine with Psyco, vs. 32-34 on a minimal Pygame program with/without Psyco);
-That OpenGL is potentially faster if I can make lists work properly (it's around 4-7 FPS right now!);
-And that if I'm doing OpenGL, I may as well make it 3D;
-But that I'm tired of being bogged down switching between graphics engines and still having the program look bad. I want to build gameplay and AI, not write yet another display system!

Thoughts? Right now I'm leaning towards either figuring out how to do a decent-looking 2D tiled engine that scrolls well, maybe refitting my "Coral" display system ( http://kschnee.xepher.net/ pics/niss-051202-big.jpg ), or figuring out how to refit and speed up the isometric-tiled "Pearl" system ( http://kschnee.xepher.net/ pics/shiningsea060630-0.jpg ), which is reasonably pretty (isn't it?). Using OpenGL at all to speed up 2D would probably force me to refit the widget system, which I'd rather avoid. Would the "Pygame Extended" project make any sense? What is its license?

Kris