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Jon Alma
Monkey-Butler
Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 50
Location: The Sunny South of France
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 Posted: Thu May 12, 2005 11:26 am Post subject: First and/or Third Person Views? |
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Just discovered RPGDX a few days ago and it's been great looking through all the projects, articles and the forums - I've been looking for this kind of group for a while now and it's nice to finally find one!
Anyway, first post and my first question ... I've been working on a 3D RPG for a while now called Legends from the Lost Realms (it's in the projects list or follow the link in the sig) and one thing that I keep coming back to is the viewing angle. Initially the player viewed his/her character from a Dungeon Siege / RTS type 'eye in the sky' angle and actually used the mouse to point and click to move. This worked okay, but didn't really please me, so on a whim I tried introducing a first person view which works great ... for me. However, to be honest I've never played that many CRPGs and I'm worried that having first person perspective only might be unattractive to a lot of role players (too action orientated or something).
As a result, I've been wondering (before the code gets set too much in concrete) if I should support at least an 'over the shoulder' third person view or even keep the point and click interface as an option.
Anyway I'd welcome your opinions ... just for information the game isn't too combat orientated - the aim is for the game to have its far share of combat, but dialogue and exploration are just as important.
Cheers,
Jon.
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Legends from the Lost Realms
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LeoDraco
Demon Hunter
Joined: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 584
Location: Riverside, South Cali
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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I think it's mostly a matter of taste, really: I've seen a few projects released on here that had a first person perspective. If you can do it well, then I don't think anyone would mind.
Personally, I prefer leaving first person for the most action-oriented games, such as the shooters. RPGs that solidly take that perspective seem rather hackneyed, to me.
The most recent Suikoden game actually provided both ways of playing: by pressing one of the controller buttons, the player was able to switch between an over-the-shoulder view and a first-person view, which was useful for getting detailed shots of characters one was talking to, but was rather difficult to move around in. (Although, that, I think, is mostly due to the general problem of moving in first-person on consoles, but that's a different kettle of fish.)
So, unless your gameplay requires the use of a single, particular perspective, I would vote to make it something that can be selected by the user.
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Rainer Deyke
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Joined: 05 Jun 2002
Posts: 672
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| Posted: Thu May 12, 2005 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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You can't please everybody. Personally, I have nothing against first person, but I can't stand 3D (where "3D" means "texture mapped polygon models").
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Jon Alma
Monkey-Butler
Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 50
Location: The Sunny South of France
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 6:47 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the feedback ...
| Rainer Deyke wrote: | | You can't please everybody. Personally, I have nothing against first person, but I can't stand 3D (where "3D" means "texture mapped polygon models"). |
You better not look at the screenshots then! Out of interest is there any particular reason for this - purely because you prefer non-3D graphics or because of the type of gameplay that might be forced on you by the switch to 3D?
| LeoDraco wrote: | | So, unless your gameplay requires the use of a single, particular perspective, I would vote to make it something that can be selected by the user. |
This is what I'm probably going to end up doing in the end especially as everything is more or less in place anyway. The only problem will be handling the character models as the third person model will have to be quite different from the models used for the arms, sword, shield, etc that would be visible in the first person view.
The only thing stopping me here is that it requires more work (obviously) and having played Morrowind for far too long (where both views are visible) I end up sticking to the first person view.
Is anyone in favour of having a eye in the sky view (which would bring the game closer to looking like an Isometric RPG?
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Legends from the Lost Realms
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Rainer Deyke
Demon Hunter
Joined: 05 Jun 2002
Posts: 672
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 7:22 am Post subject: |
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| Jon Alma wrote: | | You better not look at the screenshots then! Out of interest is there any particular reason for this - purely because you prefer non-3D graphics or because of the type of gameplay that might be forced on you by the switch to 3D? |
I don't like the way 3D models look. More specifically, I have yet to see any 3D polygon model of a person, animated in realtime, which didn't look ugly to me. 3D is fine for inorganic things like architecture or spaceships.
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Bjorn
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Joined: 29 May 2002
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Location: Germany
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 7:54 am Post subject: |
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I've looked at the screenshots and ran the demo of Legends from the Lost Realms and in my opinion the bird's eye point of view should be preferred to 1st person. I think with bird's eye you can pretty much get away with your current level of detail (texture still seemed blurry though), while in 1st person the player would get close up to the polygons.
Overall the demo looked very nice I think, and it ran fine in Wine. I hope if The Mana World will ever go 3D, it will look something like that. :-)
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Jon Alma
Monkey-Butler
Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 50
Location: The Sunny South of France
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 9:46 am Post subject: |
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| Bjørn wrote: | I've looked at the screenshots and ran the demo of Legends from the Lost Realms and in my opinion the bird's eye point of view should be preferred to 1st person. I think with bird's eye you can pretty much get away with your current level of detail (texture still seemed blurry though), while in 1st person the player would get close up to the polygons.
Overall the demo looked very nice I think, and it ran fine in Wine. I hope if The Mana World will ever go 3D, it will look something like that. :-) |
Glad you like it - about the textures and even the models, it's true that they do suffer in the switch to 1st person, especially as there wasn't any model lighting which made everything look a bit flat closer up. In the latest version of the game I'm introducing some more detailed models with significantly improved texturing which really helps with this and while it's not up to professional standards it's pretty good.
I would love to be able to post some more recent shots but at the moment I'm halfway through making some pretty major changes to the heart of the code and the only screenshot currently possible would be of the error log :)
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Locrian
Wandering Minstrel
Joined: 04 Apr 2003
Posts: 105
Location: VA USA
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 2:58 am Post subject: |
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I like 3D and first person and action RPGs. But I'm a bit of a heretic. I agree with Bjorn though. With the current graphics first person would be bothersome. Some of those textures are way blurry. But if this is going to be fixed then maybe it would work. Theres nothing wrong with overhead or 3rd person either though.
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Adam
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Joined: 30 Dec 2002
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Location: Australia
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 4:12 am Post subject: |
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I can't say i like 1st person cameras in RPGS.
And with 3rd person cameras I like the ones that are more over the sholder than in the sky. I find it annoying in games when i can't tilt the camera enough to get a better view down the road or whatnot.
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BadMrBox
Bringer of Apocalypse
Joined: 26 Jun 2002
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Location: Dark Forest's of Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 2:49 pm Post subject: |
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I think 3rd person is preferable in rpgs. 1st person fits more for shooters. (And 3rd person does not function in shooters) o0. Anyway, I have looked at your screenshots and it seems to be fairly nice. Yet, of course, I prefer 2d :).
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RuneLancer
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 6:27 am Post subject: |
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1st person gives a very "personal" feel to things and a higher degree of direct integration in a scene. You feel as though your interaction with the game is direct. However, in an RPG, this is hardly the case. Particularly when random encounters and menus are involved.
3rd person gets my vote. For one thing, first person is annoying and restricts your view. For another, cutscenes would be awkward. Particularly in RPGs with parties, and doubly so if there's no "main" character that's forced to be in your party. In those cases, it would be a mess of confusion and would take away a lot from the cutscenes.
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Jon Alma
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Joined: 09 May 2005
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Location: The Sunny South of France
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| RuneLancer wrote: | 1st person gives a very "personal" feel to things and a higher degree of direct integration in a scene. You feel as though your interaction with the game is direct. However, in an RPG, this is hardly the case. Particularly when random encounters and menus are involved.
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The increased feeling of interaction is something that encouraged me to move to first person as the previous 'Dungeon Siege' view felt a bit too far from the action (even for a role playing game). Having said that all the 'votes' for a third person view are very valid and I am leaving the possibility of adding this at a later stage (not just now as I haven't yet created a character model good enough to include in a third person view).
| RuneLancer wrote: | | 3rd person gets my vote. For one thing, first person is annoying and restricts your view. For another, cutscenes would be awkward. Particularly in RPGs with parties, and doubly so if there's no "main" character that's forced to be in your party. In those cases, it would be a mess of confusion and would take away a lot from the cutscenes. |
Cutscenes are on the agenda (but right down the bottom) and it is definitely the case that first person view would be awkward here. As for parties, well I'm planning for Legends to be a lone adventurer type game, partly because it's easier and quicker to code and partly because I am creating something that is closer to a first person shooter than the normal RPG (but something that will definitely be a RPG and not the next Doom!). If you know Morrowind then you have an idea of what I am trying to do.
As an aside, one common warning against moving to first person view was that the graphics were not detailed enough to allow this - very true, but hopefully as the latest screenshots posted in the project page indicate a lot of work has been done to ensure that the graphics are up to the required standard for a 1st/3rd person view. Hope you like them.
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Terry
Spectral Form
Joined: 16 Jun 2002
Posts: 798
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Jon Alma hath wrote: | | Cutscenes are on the agenda (but right down the bottom) and it is definitely the case that first person view would be awkward here. |
Deus Ex solved this by using a lot of cinematic camera angles during the cut scenes, so even though it's a first person game, it's technically third person during the cut scenes. And it looks great.
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RuneLancer
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