Re: [Chicken-users] 3D games in Chicken

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Matthew David Parker wrote:
> Your RTS game is a good idea though,
TBS!  TBS!  Do not be confused.  I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been, A 
Real Time Strategy Player.

>  and would be much easier than a 3d
> Xpilot.  Though it seems like just making a simple little space game in
> chicken would be a good test of chickens abilities.
I have faith in Chicken's abilities - and Felix's - or I would never 
have become the Windows CMake buildmaster.  So for me the point is more 
about what is worth doing as a matter of game design.  Simple little 
space games don't matter to me.  Frameworks that other people can use 
for more than one game, are higher up my list of priorities.  That's 
what my 2D hex framework is about.  Complicated games are more 
interesting to me, which is why I'm into TBS.

Physics is complicated and of great interest to many game programmers.  
It doesn't turn me on though, so that functionality would have to be 
done already for me to bother with it.  I'm not looking for a 
from-scratch physics project.  That sort of thing is a lot of work for 
no clear gain in terms of game design.  On the other hand, if the 
physics framework is already done, then I can put my Game Designer hat 
on and just use it.  Not sure how I feel about physics from an AI 
standpoint.  I don't object to *geometric* AI processing, i.e. the 
tactical requirements of 3D spaceships fighting each other, but physics 
is going to complicate the game state, probably to the point of 
intractability.  Then again all the TBS problems I contemplate are 
intractable anyways, so I dunno.  The intersection between physics and 
my TBS penchant is probably discrete simulation and finite element 
analysis.  At what point are these things of value to the player, in 
terms of game design?  I don't have an answer.  It is all too easy to do 
physics for the sake of simulationism; that's not game design.

>   All you'd really have
> to do is get it to load up the little cave map and have some real physics
> to make the ship fly around.  I mean, I don't think anyone should plan on
> making a whole xpilot 3d game, but just seeing if chicken can do the 3d
> engine would be good, 
Chicken *can* do it.  The question is not "seeing," the question is 
doing it, and whether someone wants to do it.  I'm saying, skip the 
proof-of-concept project.  Aim higher, towards whatever it is you 
actually want.  (Which admittedly could be 3D XPilot.)

> and then you could use that base to make other sorts of games.
>   
Someone else might want to do a networking engine, or a First Person 
Shooter engine, or a RPG engine, or a MUD engine, or whatever.  There 
are all sorts of underlying "middleware" engines one could pursue.  I've 
told you the one I'm pursuing, the 2D hex engine.  The question is, do 
you really, really, really want to pursue a "3D space physics" engine?  
It sounds like a set of problems you're already experienced with.  I'm 
just asking if your Vision and committment is so strong that you know 
for sure you want to pursue this.  The reason I pose it as a question, 
is because if you really *were* totally committed to it, you'd just be 
telling us so.  :-)  As I am with the 2D hex engine, minus some caveats 
about "if you show me another project that's already working...."


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every