Problem description:
How many functions of display would I have to go through to make "complete" 3D graphics in Dream Maker.
E.g. Mathematical calculations to render all icons in view to 3D.
There are a lot of proc's that manipulate icons, it just takes careful consideration to determine and manipulate them respectively so they have 3D presence. Now then I was curious whom thinks they know the proc's that should be focused on?
| |
Sir Quizalot wrote:
There are a lot of proc's that manipulate icons, it just takes careful consideration to determine and manipulate them respectively so they have 3D presence. Now then I was curious whom thinks they know the proc's that should be focused on? -_- | |
Sir Quizalot wrote:
There are a lot of proc's that manipulate icons, it just takes careful consideration to determine and manipulate them respectively so they have 3D presence. Now then I was curious whom thinks they know the proc's that should be focused on? None of them, because Ter13 has already given you an answer: It's not going to happen using BYOND. | |
I have here a housekey. With careful consideration, I should be able to fillet this trout. How many cuts would I have to go through to make filleted trout in my house?
| |
There's a couple workarounds, but BYOND isn't really an engine that wants to work in 3D. I've tried it before in this example:
http://www.byond.com/developer/Makeii/RelicVoxel3D It's very slow when zoomed into the cubes. This is also not true 3D, but simply a grid of icons acting as a buffer that changed colors, and the cubes are made of "voxels" which would be more like a bunch of square sprites meshed together. | |
Well Makeii has half of it, now if you made it where the view was a camera or entity that could "pan" around the objects aka the objs rotating according the the way the player moves you'd have a start to a 3D BYOND.
| |
The amount of processing it takes to make anything resembling 3D is way too much to have the game able to run at a decent framerate, and especially not for multiplayer.
I suspect the simplest method to get something that looks nice is to have a fully-rotatable (about the Z axis) isometric perspective. It requires pre-generation a factor of 360 icons per atom at an isometric perspective rotated about the Z axis; the matrix procs provide no improvement for this (png). The next coolest method would be to have a first person view (gif). The matrix procs do improve this pretty well, resource-wise. Both are just barely pulling off decent framerates with consistently low-enough CPU usage to be somewhat interactive. Any more (adding gameplay, multiplayer, fun) would probably freeze the game entirely. | |
I tried this once. Gave up. I think I'm going to try it again. :| Even though I know I'll fail horribly.
This time, I'll look at it in a different perspective. Not using the map at all until I'm done. Basically making my own 3 axis. Then when it comes time to present them in the map, the Z coord will act as a layer instead. That's my base thought. ._. As for any possible way in doing it now, you're very much out of luck, Sir Quizzalot. But, I'll keep you posted how many times I cry myself to sleep due to my failure. ;) | |
The use of "sprites in a 3D space" is always doable though, and with rotation and scaling implemented into BYOND, it's very possible to create 3D objects made up of these sprites.
I was gonna do something with this, but I guess I got sidetracked indefinitely. Also shown in some other thread involving the new features:  | |
I see scaling, an animation, and movement along the x and y axis. How is there any 3D rotating? Have you created that image in Dream Maker? It's a nice effect if not done on a 3D coordinate system. But I'm still looking for 3D graphics. Rendering timing needs to implemented to manage framerate. But the actual rendering not the frame rate is the focus right now. I desire a full 3D coordinate system using Dream Maker syntax to mathematically render icons. Now where would a good focal point to begin manipulating data as such be.
Note: It all boils down to math. Just need the "layer" and available fuctions to start it on. | |
I'll look for others but for now to do this I need procedures such as cos(x).
| |
"True" 3D will likely never be possible in BYOND.
The best possible things are some clever perspective tricks as you've been shown here so far. None of which are "true" 3D systems. Even with the new visual features (animate(), transform, etc.), there's still not enough flexibility to approximate a model & skin rendering engine. You may be able to fake it, by stretching and skewing icons into the various faces of 3D shapes (as in, each face of a 3D cube can be represented by a square icon that has been skewed and stretched/compressed into the proper perspective for the viewing angle), but such a system will be very taxing, and probably won't run well enough to form a game around it. | |
The sprite method is definitely using math to render icons in a 3D coordinate system. It takes some more math to do relative rotations on all axes, but it's doable with sprites.
Another relatively easy method is raycasting, but don't expect detail with that either. There are plenty of ways to use math to do absolutely anything. For example, you could use raytracing to have incredibly detailed 3D environments. Xooxer has a demo with a screenshot of a reflective ball in a reflective room. However, it takes an incredibly long time to render one frame. | |
BYOND just isn't built to efficiently handle a screen buffer with manual code. Thus, raycasting (being your best bet for any kind of projection) is at best, a gimmick here.
If you are looking to do 3D, I suggest you find another engine.