Thursday, July 30, 1998

Are you confused by computer game reviews that talk about "3D perspective" "top down view" and "first person engines"? If you are, it is probably because people who can write make games and people who can't write game reviews ;) Therefore I, The Serpent Lord, will define all of these terms and discuss how they are missused.

ENGINE - in a computer game this is the stuff that does all of the boring work - rendering the graphics, mixing the sound, and so forth. Right now I want to focus on several kinds of graphics engines:

• 2D ENGINE - uses few or no polygonal objects. These are not very useful for 1st person POV games since they have a limited number of directions you can see the game from. Usually this is 1 direction, but some games use 2D first-person views in 4 directions or even 360 degree scrolling views.
• ORTHOGRAPHIC 3D ENGINE - Shows 3D characters and/or environments without "foreshortening" - distant objects appear to be the same size as near objects. Orthographic engines can be less demanding on the graphics engine than fully 3D graphics. They also allow the view to be rotated smoothly unlike a 2D engine. These are becoming very popular - especially on the Sony Playstation which does not draw textures correctly on fully 3D polygones. This type of graphics engine is probably not a good choice for a first-person view.
• RAY-CAST ENGINE - Like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, these engines use "fake" 3D perspective (called 2-point perspective in art). This is a pretty good type of engine for 1st person point of view games, but I think such an engine could be adapted to a 3rd person POV game. Ray-cast engines can even have fully-polygonal characters (Chasm) or complex, realistic level designs (Duke3D).
• FULL 3D ENGINE - Quake is the benchmark for this type of engine, but there were true 3D engines before in games like flight simulators. A fully 3D engine allows for more camera movement, but for some reason the press seems to have gotten the inaccurate impression that 3D engines are not well suited to 3rd person, multiple character games. (Of course it's fine with me if the press and most game developers want to believe this - I wouldn't mind being the first person to actually implement such a game.)

POINT OF VIEW - There are many aspects of POV but most game players and reviewers can only describe games as first-person or third-person. Often they mistake the engine for the POV.

• FIRST PERSON - seeing through the eyes of the player-character. Many game designers make the mistake of thinking this kind of POV is more "immersive" and "realistic" than other views, but there are several unrealistic things about existing first-person games. One problem is that you can't see yourself (if you think you can't see yourself in real-life try looking at your feet sometimes - if you can't you are probably dangerously overweight) Another problem is that you can't "feel" the enviroment - the first-person world is a mostly video, partialy audio experience, so walking a tightrope in Quake is nothing like real-life. As virtual reality and game designs improve the first-person point of view will probably become more practical and more popular.
• SECOND PERSON - seeing through the eyes of a non-player character or anothers player's character. This is usually used only in special cases.
• THIRD PERSON - usually an "omniscient" point of view based on an invisible camera instead of an actual character. The third-person POV is currently the most flexible and genre-crossing POV. There are many variations - here are a few:
• CHASE-CAM - also known as the over-the-shoulder view. Used in games as varied as Shadows of the Empire, Duke Nukem 3D, Tomb Raider, Mario 64, and even Hexplore (an orthographic 3D game with control similar to Diablo and Warcraft - you can have the camera turn and follow a lead character) One advantage of this POV is seeing what you are doing and where you are. This has made it very popular for games with lots of jumping and climbing, but it is not as bad for shooting and jumping as you might think. Quake chase-cams are hard to work with because they run on the server instead of the player's computer and suffer from lag.
• THREE-QUARTER VIEW - strictly speaking this POV means you are viewing the world from a 45 degree horizontal and vertical angle. If you look at a cube from a 3/4 view 3 sides are equally visible. There are many similar POVs that are usually lumped into this category for good reason. The camera does not rotate to follow the player-character, but it can "scroll" around to follow a character or pointing device. This POV is popular for games with many player-characters and/or enemies because you can see a lot of the battlefield clearly.
• TOP-DOWN - a view from directly overhead - although some people use this term to misleadingly refer to 3/4 view games. The top-down view allows for some interesting tricks like rotating sprites. Some people find this point-of-view confusing and difficult to "immerse" themselves in, but it is still a pretty good view for action games.
• FIXED CAMERA - the scene does not move in this POV and often the backgrounds are pre-rendered. Resident Evil is a classic example of this style. Twinsen's Oddysey uses a different FIXED CAMERA approach in some parts - the camera changes when you walk out of it's view or when you press a certain key. The scene is re-drawn only when the camera moves but the characters can move around in this dynamically drawn scene. This allows for faster high-detail graphics on slower computers. The fixed camera illustrates a gray area between 2D and 3D graphics, but there are many different implementations. The graphics engine and the point-of-view are completely different things.

	Tuesday, July 28, 1998

SINDAY - Ritual Entertainment has released a demo of their first-person shooter, Sin. In the typical inbred PlanetQuake fashion I'll point you to PlanetQuake's sister site, Ritualistic for download information.

Here are some of my impressions about the Sin demo:

• It performs and looks very good in low resolution software rendered mode. It even gets pretty good speed in hi-res software mode. It's good to see that most game companies still understand where people are at in terms of hardware.
• The in-game movies and "scripted" scenarios are very cool. If you poke around the Sin files you'll find that much of it is controlled by simple plain text script files. Music and many other things in Sin are also controlled by plain text configuration and script files.
• Punching people is fun! The hand to hand attack is actually useful. Your punches are fast and usually effective - since most punches are almost certain to hit enemies in their unarmored heads. In fact you can often take out the bad guys with a single punch.
• I think comparisons between Sin and Duke Nukem 3D are misleading. Sin puts you into the middle of a story - It's more of a role-playing experience than games where the story basically amounts to monsters running at you grunting and snarling.

GENRES - Have you seen comments in computer game magazines like "Final Fantasy VII is more of an adventure game than an RPG" and wondered what the writers were smoking? So have I. I think I've figured it out though: They are smoking something called "genres"

Genres are to games as stereotypes are to people and as typecasts are to actors. Some games embrace genres - Quake is a first person shooter without trying to be anything more or less. While others defy classification or even create their own genres - The Legend of Zelda is an action/RPG.

Most games are designed with a certain genre in mind from the beginning - Final Fantasy VII was an RPG from it's very inception. But designers are free to mix in other elements. When you start confusing a game's unique features with it's general design then you could falsely conclude that Quake is an RPG, Diablo is a real-time-strategy game and Final Fantasy VII is an "adventure" game.

Here are 3 simple characteristics that tell you more about a game than it's "genre":

• ACTION - action gaming emphasizes "skills". you have to learn the game's controls and/or timing to be successful. A game can have many degrees of action from turn-based to real-time or split-second timing.
• STRATEGY - strategy differs from skills in that it doesn't neccessarily require complex controls or timing. Strategy can vary from watching your ammo count to running a city.
• ROLE-PLAYING - role-playing is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of gaming. Role-playing is simply about "being there". It's about controlling characters in a fictional world. That can include anything from playing a soldier in battle to creating your own persona in an online world.

The Legend of Zelda is pretty well balanced in these areas, while Tetris is all action and strategy with no role-playing. Very few games concentrate on only one area. Why? Well, probably because you don't need a computer to play pure action, strategy or role-playing games. You can get all of that from games like tiddlywinks, chess, and D&D.

	Sunday, July 26, 1998

I added some "spheres" to my QuArK Geometry Library. I call these approximate spheres "globes" because their faces are divided into latitudes and longitudes like a globe. I still need the following shapes:

• regular tetrahedrons
• regular inscribed cube
• regular circumscribed octohedron
• regular dodecahedrons
• regular icosahedrons

I've also added some tips on using the globes and a glossary explaining what all of these big words mean!

I've also invented a little trick that lets you make water with fake shading In Quake (and similar games where water is not shaded). Download the map.

	Wednesday, July 22, 1998

I couldn't think of anything sillier to do today so I put together this useless applet. The model is actually HARD-CODED into the applet - which goes against every massively-modifiable bone in my body :) I will work on fixing that. Any help on this would be appreciated. I can provide source code on request.

I've also done shading, Z-buffering, sprites, and tile-maps, but my applets always seem to have pathological speed problems. I've seen much faster Java applets; If you have any tips, advice, or just want to plug your favorite profiling utility, contact me.

This ties into the Squawk Massively Modifiable game engine. I've dumped the fancy graphics to hopefully improve performance so I can work on other important parts of the engine. There are lots of great graphics engines out there, and I don't need to make an inferior imitation just yet.

	Tuesday, July 21, 1998

GAMES - Squawk Massively Modifiable Game Engine: Added a new section about massively modifiable game structure. The new section describes various game layers: core, libraries, byte code, scripts, databases, files, and utilities.

LINKS - New site: The Programmers Vault. This site covers everything from making QBASIC games to 3D graphics programming.

	Monday, July 20, 1998

I have rearranged the links page, and I added some new links. Actually I'm moving the best things out of my Internet Explorer "favorites" and putting them where everyone can use them :)

	Saturday, July 18, 1998

I've made some new brushes for QuArK with lots of new cones and cylinders. These handy new shapes fit well with the kind of neat, grid-aligned geometry which I always endorse.

Writing a tutorial for a Windows program, or thinking about writing one? Try out Paint Shop Pro's screen capture tools. You can assign a key or key combo to take a screenshot of the whole screen, a single window, or even a single part of a window - like a frame or toolbar.

	Friday, July 17, 1998

The QuArK Ring-Maps page has opened. You can sign up to work on ring maps for Quake or Quake 2, single player, deathmatch, capture-the-flag, and more.

	Thursday, July 16, 1998

Check out Lionhead Studios who are developing an interesting game called "Black & White". They are also developing some useful content and links for their site.

I need YOUR help to improve the content of the The Serpent Lord's Web Pages. I'm looking for links to good game development and modification sites. Also, you can make sure there are daily updates to this page by sending me news or just the latest ideas you want to share.

I also want to set up a message board, but I haven't gotten any feedback from the busy webmasters at The Planet. If you can help me out with this, let me know.

Looking for a font editor but don't want to spend a small fortune? Well I have been for quite a while. I have finally found an inexpensive, uncrippled shareware font editor called Softy.

	Wednesday, July 15, 1998

WANTED MODELS

• .md2 of the red M&M guy from the commercials
• .md2 model of detailed face, head & shoulders for close-up facial animation

DYNAMIC CAMERA ANGLES

I've been working on some new camera triggers in Quake to see how dynamically changing points-of-view will look. However, "GreenMarine" came up with basically the same thing for Unreal, so instead of trying to steal the spotlight, I will let you read about GreenMarine's "Omnicam" here at the PlanetUnreal Unreal Design Competition!

Although I haven't played Unreal, I suspect that it is coming much closer to the "Massively Modifiable" game concept. So, why do I feel compelled to continue developing a new game engine? Two words - "competition" and "hardware".

Fair and constructive competition encourages innovation. Wherever Unreal falls short, there is an opportunity for a new game engine to fill a niche, just as Unreal has filled a niche unoccupied by Quake engine games.

Say what you will about game engines like Unreal "raising the bar" of 3D graphics engines, but most people don't have the hardware to play it. Where the Unreal team designed a game engine for the best hardware around, our goal is to create games that can be played by most gamers while still providing great visuals and performance for those on the "bleeding edge" of hardware.

QUARK RING MAPS

If you use QuArK and want to sign up to work on some "ring maps" (like chain maps but with a circular feedback and tweaking process) go to the QuArK homepage and check out the forum, then sign up with Goo. This should be a great opportunity to learn, teach, or just show off your mapping skills.

	Tuesday, July 14, 1998

I have updated the Games section:

• Squawk - A role-playing game, a Quake TC, and now a "massively modifiable" game engine in development!
• Other Quake conversions we've created include The Sword of Ares and Hack and Slash.
• Dark Core is an idea for a CRPG in the style of Japanese videogame console RPGs. If you've been to the site before, check out my new textures.

	Monday, July 13, 1998

The main menu has changed. Expect some redundancy, but I think this new design groups things in a more useful way. There is some especially important stuff to see on the new games page.

I wrote up some simple map editing tutorials:

• Creating a Cylinder with Any Number of Sides
• Creating a Cylinder from Wedges for Curving and Spiral Stairs

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