Today i saw some screenshots of Warcraft III at Gamespot, and i really couldnt help thinking :"Thats ugly", yep, you can beat me with a stick if you want, but it just doesnt look pretty. Sure the ground/enviroment looks fine in 3D, but the units themselves just look 3d-ish, they just dont seem as "real" as the good old 2d units of Warcraft II/AOE and similar games. I remember playing Emperor: Battle for Dune, and being incredibly annoyed by those small 3d units. The problem is that if you zoom in alot they look pretty great, but when you zoom out to were youll be doing most of the gameplaying they look ugly, compared to 2d sprites. The same goes for CRPG, i still feel Baldurs Gate is graphically superior to for example Pool of Radiance 2(Which only uses 3d for characters). And it isnt really that surprising, i mean why was 3d introduced? Because it allows you to view game objects from many angles. But in games that are traditionally isometric view, you dont really need to see the game objects from many angles. I mean if you want to order a great big army, where is the best place to control everything? Looking down of course! Thats why generals of past times used to sit at the nearest hill. In CRPGS it might be harder to argue for the lack of view options since the game IS trying to give you the impression that you are a specific person in a party, but i still feel that the overhead view gives a much better control and understanding of the world. And i think the only real alternative is moving to full first person view, which makes control/navigation complicated(especially for a party) but allows more immersion. Basicly i just think that alot of developers seems to think that 3d = good game, which is pretty silly. Personally i think that we should try to take advantage of the capabilities of the 3d hardware to achieve alpha blending, light and other effects, but not go all 3d without a bloody good reason for it Well, thats what i think anyway, lets see if anyone cares

Tough call. I tend to agree that you can produce better looking sprites than 3D objects in many circumstances, but if you do support zooming in/out past a certain point in your game a 2D sprite is going to artifact all to heck and gone if zoomed too far, whereas a 3D object will more than likely tolerate the expansion better. The question is: does zooming to that extreme make for a better game?

Zooming OUT from a ''normal'' view is useful for games involving a large number of units or a large amount of territory.. zooming in, on the other hand, is of limited use in those cases. If your game is more "squad/group" oriented then zooming in makes sense, to focus on the party''s immediate environment to handle being attacked at close range.

Mind you, the couple of games I played with zoom-in/zoom-out I always ended up picking a decent middle ground and never changed it, effectively throwing away the zoom function. And for the more "classic" games without zoom I never missed it, even when I go back to them (heck I still play Diablo I so what do I know right? lol!).

2d-via-3D seems like a good approach, as you said, to take advantage of the hardware. But I''m not sure there''s actually a "right" answer to the question of "sprite vs. mesh" for all circumstances. Me, I''m going to do an experiment with meshes and sprites on the same playing field and see which I personally like best!

Well, a good 32-bit 2d model can often look better than a lowly 30 poly count model. But you also need to look at the memory management of the graphics the game needs to load in the back buffer. For a high quality 2d rts/rpg with say 100 models each with 4 directional facings multiple by the number of frames, it will eat up a ton of system resources where as 3d wouldn''t have to suffer the same fate.

My take on it is that for any game where you are going to be controlling more than one character, 3D isn''t strictly necessary (and can often hurt the experience). Although I still love playing them, RPGs that have you play a full party with a single camera I''ve always found to be a bit disturbing (I might as well be playing a person with 6 split-personalities and 12 arms). However, games like Deus Ex wouldn''t be nearly as immersive without 3D.

I think the context matters. I would rather have an isometric view so that I can see all of my party members at once. Unless it is truly critical, I think that the ability to zoom in is useless (since most people would leave it at one view, anyway).

-Chris

When I first played Ground Control (since it where one of the first games using it) I was stunned by the kewl effect of not having the fokus fixed in the "bird" perspective. Now I could move round my troops check out their views and see the battle from the best angle.

I totally agree that Warcraft III looks silly in 3D as it is now. Maybe they should just keep it 2D or change the GFX engine totally to a more Ground Control like one. There you have full control over your view and can use whatever angle you like.

And as a final I think Warcraft III just looks like a game for kids ~5,...sadly....cute cute cute

- Captain_RB

Actually I think the problem with WC3''s graphics is not the fact that it is in 3D, nor is it the fact that they use a fixed point of view (in fact, I think this is a good thing - camera controls are great, but you should never be forced to use them)

I think it boils down to something really stupid - textures. In short, it looks to me like the artists were torn between a cartoony look (like WC2) and a realistic look (to fit in with the 3D) and ended up with something that just looks a bit weird. It doesn''t look too bad, but I think if you want to see 3D done right in an RTS, look at Ground Control.

Mooglez: As to memory requirements, i really dont think its that much of an issue, as modern video cards have 32 or 64MB ram, which should be enough even with 32-bit sprites.

crouilla: I think you are correct that the context matters, if you are only one single character, the 2d overview look could yield effectively to full 3d, but i must say that many 3d RPG seems to have some basic navigation problems, ie people cant find their way around a big world thats in 3d.

Captain_RB: As for ground control i havent played it, but i just looked at some screenshots, and while it looks good, it also looks confusing But i dont mind 3d sprites too much for tanks and other non-organic characers, but for they fall way short when trying to imitate for example humans.

Another example i just thought of: Shogun: Total War, one of the best strategy games i ever played. The camera options allowed you to see some pretty cool stuff, but as i think about it, i was always trying to get as close as i could to a top-down view when actually doing battle.[edit: shogun uses 2d for units, and 3d for terrain, which is pretty good, but they really should have allowed for a good top down view]

Edited by - ziphnor on February 14, 2002 6:42:01 AM

I admit Ground Control looks a bit confusing...I thought so too at the start. But you get used to it fast and realize that this view style is much better and, most important, more FUN.

That's my opinion..

PS. And I agree totally that GC is a game that have done the 3D view correct! :D DS

- Captain_RB


Edited by - captain_rb on February 14, 2002 7:43:33 AM

im glad someone agrees with my view.
RTS/RPG Games should be 2d isolinear

I agree 3d doesnt add anything to gameplay, yet to create a succesfull game (ie sell a lot) u are gonna need some pretty eye candy as well. I''ve been following the progress on age of mythology (by ensemble studios) and from what i''ve seen in screenshots they can do amazing things with 3d. Deformable terrain, cool explosions etc. However they will have a fixed camera postion which wouldnt need 3d at all.
Things like this wont add to gameplay and they know it, but it sure as hell looks damn cool :-)