3d vehicles & why

Wolf01 · Post by **Wolf01** » 27 Mar 2006 18:49

an old proverb say: "when transport tycoon become in fully 3D, the wolf stops play it"

Redirect Left · Post by **Redirect Left** » 27 Mar 2006 19:01

Wolf01 wrote:an old proverb say: "when transport tycoon become in fully 3D, the wolf stops play it"

um english......

Wolf01 · Post by **Wolf01** » 27 Mar 2006 19:28

i'm not english... i use google to translate what i don't know

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 28 Mar 2006 02:43

That looks pretty English to me.

Confucius say: Old proverb have broken English.

And that's the way it should be.

lucaspiller · Post by **lucaspiller** » 29 Mar 2006 21:26

I would like to see a version of 3D OpenTTD, but it would completely change the gameplay. As for 3D strategy games - Railroad Tycoon anyone?

I have played the Dreamcast port of Railroad Tycoon 2 which was full 3D, I liked it, but playing with a silly little controller was much harder than playing with a mouse.

Railroad Tycoon 2

Railroad Tycoon 3

LordOfThePigs · Post by **LordOfThePigs** » 29 Mar 2006 22:35

lucaspiller wrote:I have played the Dreamcast port of Railroad Tycoon 2 which was full 3D

If I remember correctly Railroad Tycoon 2 wasn't full 3D. Only the terrain was full 3D. The rest were prerendered sprites, much like what OTTD is (and what the new graphics system will be)

gigajum · Post by **gigajum** » 30 Mar 2006 06:23

Why need a 3D game? If a game is fascinating, you play it without looking at the graphic details of the game. Why play Pro Quakers with graphic settings set to worst? They love the game and not how it looks.
Nice graphic is ok for some time you look around and watch the game, but while it is your turn you do not look how good or bad a pice of rail looks like.
I think OpenTTD should keept in 2D, strategic games in 3D get lost of overview.

MattW · Post by **MattW** » 30 Mar 2006 11:47

Think for a bit. What are the system requirements for SimCity 4? It's rendered in full 3D, and they had to limit the camera in order to avoid overburdening the graphics cards at the time. Doing a game like OpenTTD in 3D would be hugely costly in terms of computation while running.

And as has been said, someone has to write the 3D engine. Looking at the current code, the game's so internally obsessed with everything being 2D that this would be incredibly difficult. I for one would rather see us make the 2D engine the best we possibly can.

DmitryKo · Post by **DmitryKo** » 30 Mar 2006 18:55

MattW wrote:What are the system requirements for SimCity 4? It's rendered in full 3D

It used a combination of good old sprites for buildings and 3D lanscape/vehicles (and actually it was quite buggy so they had to patch it to the death).

Ben_Robbins_ · Post by **Ben_Robbins_** » 30 Mar 2006 22:25

My Knowledge of any computer game outside of Transport Tycoon is almost unexsistent, but what ive seen in games i find in going 3d the frame rate become lower...or at least it seems like that to me, and suddely i find it less natural that being able to fly around a 2d set. Stuttering i find is the most unrealistic thing in the world. 1 step foward 20 steps back sorta thing... For the new graphics i dont realyl even think the 4 different angles would be that useful, like sim city 2000 had (i think)...cause 90'degrees is enough of a step that it doesnt feal natural to jump to that angle. (takes second or so to get your bearings)... i see playing transport tycoon as a visual equation, so angles are an added confusion.

I think random things in 3d would be really cool though. like some of the boss heads in the company information box, if they could move about a bit... and maybe some videos if you were to double click on to trains and things in the buying zone bit, it could pan around them. Or when you query a square, it could pop up with a box with that object rotating.

suit · Post by **suit** » 22 Jul 2006 13:11

i guess converting simple things to 3d would be an interresting idea - in fact a 3d model with a simple texture of a train or a bus uses way less diskspace than a sprite, ok - if compared 1:1 the sprite is a little smaller, but you can use the 3d model for large numbers of things ingame (1 cart model, 50 different textures)

the easiest way is just to model a little cuboid for the carts and a hammer-shaped thing for the locomotives - but they wont look as good as the acutal spites

to have a bit more "roundish" looking of the carts and trains you need to cut the edges (higher poly count) or use t&l features, bump maps or displacement maps - but that will require newer direct x cards

Salvo_guy · Post by **Salvo_guy** » 22 Jul 2006 13:23

I would have to agree with a large group of the OTTD users... a 3D version of OTTD has been discussed time and time again... and it has been rejected everytime (notice how it hasn't happend)

Prehaps try one of the other forums... (ie the ones down the bottom of the index)

suit · Post by **suit** » 23 Jul 2006 09:29

ok, ignore my recent post in here - i found this thread

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14549

thats not exactly what i meant but its close too it - is easier to premodel things (with high polycounts of course) in 3d and capture/render 2d shots of it

if there are only 4 different angels for viewing the map (0, 90, 180 and 270°) this solution is way enough

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » 23 Jul 2006 13:37

Salvo_guy wrote:I would have to agree with a large group of the OTTD users... a 3D version of OTTD has been discussed time and time again... and it has been rejected everytime (notice how it hasn't happend)

Prehaps try one of the other forums... (ie the ones down the bottom of the index)

It's amazing how quickly these things get taken out of context.

I DO NOT advocate full 3D.

I DEFINITELY advocate 3D vehicles which would look smooth, turn nicely, climb hills nicely, and probably be faster (definitely more memory efficient) than masses of 2D sprites.

Given the scale the models would only be simple (a few hundred polys). It would run on anything that could run Quake 1. This is not a CPU or GPU intensive thing. Screenshots like that of Railroad Tycoon 3 do not show what I'm talking about.

habell · Post by **habell** » 24 Jul 2006 11:36

I like the 3D thing, but what stopped me from playing Railroad Tycoon 2 was that the most interesting of the TTD game for me was creating the transport systems. In Railroad Tycoon it is almost automated. Just point and click and the rail is automatically placed, no signals. I like to be in control of the construction and the result. Thats why I like TTD and OTTD better then all the other games pretending to be the same.

I hope this game-play won't be lost when the game used 3D images. Vehicles and houses can be 3D, but I'd like the playing grounds to be somewhat 2D, as it is now.

The conclusion: Upgrading the images-system is good, but don't chance the way it is played.

Any seconds?

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » 31 Jul 2006 11:35

This would have zero impact on gameplay, other than making it more immersive by making the vehicles move better.

Korenn · Post by **Korenn** » 31 Jul 2006 13:14

charlieg: I completely agree with you.

and I feel sorry for you, since you've fallen in the same trap as others (including me) have fallen in before. Your flaw was to call it '3d'. It doesn't matter what else you say, as soon as those 2 symbols appear in that order, people already have their opinion formed.

A better description would have been something like 'realtime rendered vehicle sprites' or 'low polygon models instead of sprites' and shun the two-symbol word alltogether.

It really amazes me that chris sawyer didn't go with realtime rendered vehicles in locomotion, but instead stuck to his RCT solution: prerender thousands upon thousands of sprites (if I remember correctly, there was one rollercoaster cart in RCT2 that had more than 1900 sprites). All those sprites are ofcourse no longer handmade, they're all rendered. Which means he has all the models.

But on the other hand, when looking at the horrible lack of multiplayer support it leads to a simple answer: CS has no clue when it comes to modern programming platforms and techniques (which explains why lomo was still written in assembler).

Realtime rendered vehicles would have made the game even smoother, smaller and probably even faster too. The only problem that I can foresee is exactly what Brianetta said: Ottd might lose its multiplatform support if a 3d graphics card is mandatory. Which means it should be optional, which is a serious pain in the butt

prissi · Post by **prissi** » 31 Jul 2006 15:11

Have you ever looked at a rendered vehicle at 10 pixel height from a texture? These things looks really very bad. Not the best example, but look here

(taken from http://way-x.got-game.org/grf/grf.htm)

Born Acorn · Post by **Born Acorn** » 31 Jul 2006 15:21

People have suggested this again and again. Debated over the OpenGL required, and even gone as far as making small tech demos to show the developers.

Yet interest has always disipated and the ideas not taken in. The reason? People like the TTD graphics as they are. They can go and play other games for flashy 3d graphics. One need only look at Darkvater's post to see proof.

It would, however be interesting to see how it would work. Some people could start an individual project using the source and "fork off"

. OpenTTD needs not be limited to one single mainstream project when interests diverge.

iNVERTED · Post by **iNVERTED** » 31 Jul 2006 19:47

The way I see it, there are 3 options:

1. Keep everything the way it is now. When we switch to the 32-bit graphics, just render a few extra angles (maybe 16 or 24 angles) of vehicles.

2. Render vehicles in 3D real-time, and everything else is drawn in 2D. Have an option to disable this and use option #1.

3. Change all the necessary code so that the game engine and the graphics engine are completely seperated. Then, code a new graphics engine to render the same scene in 3D, and have an option to disable this and use option #1 or #2.

Obviously, #3 requires probably a lot of coding to be done. I wouldn't know as I've never looked at the source, but:

MattW wrote:Looking at the current code, the game's so internally obsessed with everything being 2D that this would be incredibly difficult.

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