Programming Optimisation regarding faux 3d

[Hrothgaar]

I know that some of you have redone the old Dungeon Master, unfortunately I dont know who the exact people are that worked on this area, so I am broadening the question a bit

We have redone the Dungeon Master faux 3d effect with different .png which gets to draw on top of each other to create the expression of the 3D-View.
It took us almost half a day to figure out how to set up such a framework, developing the formulas, implementing movement and a 2d-map display but as the first goal of our little Project is to do a Tutorial for others on how to achive such a framework, I wonder if there is an easier way to determine the placement of the different wall tiles without working with 3d onto 2d projection formulas, which we did.

Would any one of you veterans (if you still around) would be so kind to explain how you did it?

[Hrothgaar]

We finished the entrance door as well, I should go ahead and upload a video to show the crackling and rumbling of the old stone door, while it moves to open slowly ;-p
(The door text, is just a placeholder)

[Sphenx]

Nice to see such work !
But I am not sure to understand : are you planning to go all 2D drawing (like old-school crawler) or have some 3D in it ?
If you go for the 2D method, just check CSBWin / SKWin where you have the drawing method and display order.
In DM it depends on the maximum number of tiles you can see (this never change) => there is a predefined array containing orders of tiles to be displayed in front of the player.
Should you change the max view possibility, you would need to generalize the method.

[Hrothgaar]

It is pure 2d like the old shool ones, we also included the possibility to change view-distances dynamically if needed.
I will take a look at the sources you mentioned, thank you!

[Sphenx]

I have been experimenting for some time a basic 3D environment with 2D images for objects.
Here is some test with lights on and off.

[Nebulus]

Waouw need that ! Seems nice!

Will it be like Doom 1&2 ? I played that game a lot as well. Are you planning to let the team pass next to the monsters or one mummy blocks the entire group such as in the original game? In Doom when they add the jump, it changed the game completely and was considered as cheating.

[Hrothgaar]

Nice

We decided to go with a 2d - approach as one of our core ideas is to make the framework as moddable, accessable and expandable as possible.
Our first goal is to use our framework for a tutorial series, after that we will probably stick to our Open-Source-Approach, which we nailed in our planning a few month ago.
The goal is not so much to create a game but an editor - Looking at you, Legend of Grimrock Editor - just in 2d.

Right now I am trying to find a way to streamline the UI a bit, mainly because our screen area is a bit smaller in comparison to DM / EOB etc.
I will post a screenshot below, its a work in progress (with placeholder artwork to not spoil too much:-)). Positions, sizes, colors and background will change in the final version.



My idea has been to combine the Character Areas (top left of the screen in the old DM) with the Attack-Icons (middle right of the screen in the old DM):

- Right clicking on a Character Name sets him as "Leader"
- Left click and hold on the name lets you drag and drop the characters around for repositioning

So far so good but regarding the selection of the attack type lead to a few headaches...

Right now it works like that if you klick an item in the game:

Left click: It gets attached to the mouse and is taken out of characters hands.
Right click: Opens the Attack Window where you can select the attack (Thrust, Slash, Throw...) with another right klick.

In my opinion this is not a good option as you rightklick a lot in combat...

If anyone has an elegant solution or would like to throw in some ideas, feel encouraged to post

Maybe it already helps if I change it to:
- Open the attack window with a rightklick and select the attack with Left-Klick instead of Right-Klick.

[Nebulus]

Seems indeed better with rightclick and then leftclick.

[Gambit37]

Left click is most commonly associated with "doing a direct action", and right-click often feels awkward, so I personally wouldn't recommend using right click for combat because it gets quite tiring compared to left clicking and is a bit counter intuitive, especially for us older players who aren't as finger-nimble as we once were...

I've puzzled over this for a long time while working on a DM update for DSB. I'm making some small improvements to the UI, and after lots of experimenting, I came to the conclusion that the FTL way is a very good all round solution and doesn't need to change .

I also experimented with combining the champions into that single space, and I also tried putting the magic UI between the two rows of champions. After extensive testing, I found that doesn't work *at all*, because it increases the precision required to quickly click on the combat icons for all four champions. I've found It's much better to keep the combat icons together, either in a row (4x1) or two rows (2x2), because splitting them with another unrelated UI element just doesn't play nicely at all.

So after many iterations, I ended up with more or less the original DM UI, but with the combat icons in the same order as the party. Left clicking just pops up the standard combat methods menu.

[Hrothgaar]

Your UI looks fantastic and I totally agree with you on this Gambit,
I also think that the way DM has done it is pretty nice, below are the screenshots from a bit more fine tuning today (still all simplified placeholder art etc.) but I also fear that it does not play out as nicely as expected, we will need to add basic combat mechanics to see this "live".

I am running into a bit of a struggle on how to arrange stuff because:

- Our resolution is just 640x360 to care for 16:9 aspect ratio, meaning even less space than the old DM had :-/
- We want to include the possibility for a map-item (like in DM2). This could be exchanged with a Grimrock-Style automap screen but I would love to keep all these "mechanics" connected to the game world.
- We want both hands to be usable, not just one from DM1.

These things combined are a recipe for some nice headaches :-/

[Nebulus]

The "gained level" sentence should remain in colors (one for each hero). I loved the feeling of this basic effect :-p

[terkio]

@Dinah. Is the spelling mistake done, on purpose ?

[Hrothgaar]

Dinah is the name of Seppi‘s cat

[terkio]

Dinah's spelling is to weak too me.

[Sphenx]

I'm interested in your opinions regarding DM2 interface : the party arrangement is integrated with the action interface and I find it globally faster to use than DM1's one. It works great with 4 members but not with more -- if you ever plan to have 4+ members like in EoB.

@Gambit : your interface looking and colors are great! what are the icons supposed to do on the bottom-left side ?

[Gambit37]

I personally don't like the DM2 interface. Combat is harder to do quickly because the two rows of action hands are separated by the party order icons and in the heat of combat it's slower to accurately click on each champions action hands in rapid sequence when there's another element between them. Also the way magic is selected is weird, and hidden in a second panel and I prefer to have that available at all times.

The icons in my screen are Hint Oracle, Auto map and Game Options.