No, this isn't based on my MMORPG Movement thread, since I'm hoping to give this a rather mediocre shot. Now, I know how to handle moving things in 3 dimensional space, but what I want to do is somewhat different. I would like to try and let the player move, lets say, a cargo ship on more than an X,Y axis, but also the Z. So it could go up, down, left, right and soforth. Now, technologically this isn't too tough, but the problem is that it is way to klunky on the handling side. What would be a good way to have the ships move on more than one plane? [edited by - black_mage_s on September 7, 2002 3:56:39 PM]

One Word: Submarines

quote: Original post by Pipo DeClown
One Word: Submarines

Thanks for being so very vague. ITS NOT LIKE I EVER COMMANDED A FLEET OF SUBMARINES EITHER, PIPO!

Anyways, I can handel the movement, but I can''t figure out how to keep it simple enough so the player won''t commit suicide because he could never figure out how to play!

One word: Buttocks

But seriously, why not make a couple different views. One from the top, one from the side. The player could give two coordinates in the top view, and the remaining coord in the side view.

Download the "Homeworld" demo and find out

The problem with that idea, GlassJaw, is that it seems a bit clunky. And, with more than one view, action sequences would look totally gay.

When you think about it for just a second, it seems good, but then you find flaws. For instance, in 3dsmax, they had a great system for rotating the 3d section, with a simple button and mouse system that could be translated easly to a keypad system. The problem with that, however, is forcing the player to constantly rotate his view.

If the user "drags" the "location", just use the left mouse button. I mean; to specify a location click it, get the mouse x and y, and transfor that to x and y in the scene (I have no idea how to do this), and thenb let the user specify a z coordinate w/ the left+right mouse button. Figuring z out will be easy since you already know the x and y. Play Homeworld or Homeworld:Cataclysm (or the demo) and you know what I mean).

Use a 3d mouse with 3d goggles

You can make a simple 3d mouse pointer fairly easily too. Just use rubberbands and two joysticks - One joystick for the x-y axis, one joystick for the x-z axis, then in the middle put somthing to grab, like a rubber ball. If you have a final rubber band to keep everything in place, you have a simple, cheap 3d mouse!

Man, the things you learn on slashdot

The possible vectors perpendicular to the vector from the camera to the focus at the focus form a plane. The cursor''s location is on that plane. For the added third dimension, pressing Shift(or another button. Homeworld used shift in a similar manner, so 3d RTS gamers would be familiar with this setup) and moving up and down with the mouse essentially moves the plane(if it isn''t visually represented that way, too, depth perception would be very difficult) forward(beyond the focus) and backward(towards the camera), respectively.

The focus is the ship in question. If you haven''t played Homeworld, play it. They have a very nice tutorial. Their interface sucked only in that moving in all 3 dimensions was excruciating(somewhat through program bugs, somewhat through interface bugs). The idea of a focus was quite good. Basically, the camera always points at the focus, and rotates around it, zooms in and out, but does not pan. That''s not really a limitation. With a far enough zoom, it''s essentially not limited at all. Homeworld used a normal rendering, and a "sensors manager", that simply plotted points where the ships are from a very distant viewpoint.

For multiple ships, the focus is the center or centroid. The camera always zooms out to accomodate ships in the focus group approaching the edge of the screen.

My approach differs from Homeworld in that Homeworld used the same axes for moves from any point of view. The approach I suggested above alters the axes depending upon which way the camera is pointing.

ACtually, I just played the homeworld demo, and found it really simple to use. I''ll probably use a system similer to that. Of course, then i have just one more problem, which is having the program handle combat in a 3d system, but thats a programming issue I''l have to get to later