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[Solifuge]

Wrestling... yes, it could never be properly animated. BUT I actually prefer reading the combat text. So an animation of a dude hitting another dude with his fist is quite enough for me. Separate animations for shooting is an important point I've missed though.

I'll certainly be making more mockups

I'd agree that animating wrestling would be far too difficult... however, you may want to consider differentiating "Unarmed Attack" from "Generic Wrestling Maneuver". I'd imagine two open hands reaching towards the target (maybe the "bear hug" Labor frame) would cut it for a Wrestle action, while Unarmed Attacks would be a fist (or in the case of handlessness, a bite or something).

Also, if you kept it relatively generic, the attack frame could look good with any Melee Weapon... or even a Hauled Item, if we have Nist Akath-esc Cabinet Beatdown moments.

[Impaler[WrG]]

hrmm, past few months ive been working on a 3d version of DF.

Im completely remaking everything, partially cuz its a damn fun challenge and also i want to try to reach the xbox community.

I like the isometric viewpoint for DF-type game, but id want to reap the benifits of true 3d engine.  Lighting, camera rotate/zoom, 3d models rendered from any angle..etc.

Although i love 2d DF, as truly the best game out there... its such a hard sell to fellow gamers and younger generations.  The graphx puts most gamers off, so we need to find a way to bring DF into a modern day look and feel.

im gunna give it a shot!

Currently Visual Fortress and Khazad (made by Peterix and myself) projects are actively making 3D systems for viewing fortress but with some important and interesting differences, for example Khazad is Isometric and Visual Fortress is Perspective projection.  More 3D applications are always welcome an I'm curious to see how you approach the problem.

[jseah]

NOTE: Anyone else notice that all of the races are fit and sculpted except for the dwarf?
And who drew all of those? except most are likely to be screenshots.

It looks like something out of a D&D rulebook.  Except that I've looked through the ones I have and I can't find it. 

[PHB, PHBII, FRCS, DLCS, ECS, Races Of Faerun/Eberron]

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While FFTA had a good-looking isometric engine, if you look carefully, they arranged all the maps such that the top square was the highest point on the map. 

This is so that they didn't have to make the map rotate.  One perspective was enough to see everywhere in the map. 

I'm sure I don't need to say why this won't work in DF.  At the very least, you need a way to make the top layer transparent.  Need to see inside towers and stuff. 

[qwertyuiopas]

Well, why not make the gmae render the terrain separate from the creatures, separate from the items, and do each one in a diffrent colour-channel? You would end up seeing things through the floor, but isn't the goal to communicate the maximum information?


Or, you could preserve your sanity and stick with isometric with transparency so you can see through obscuring walls.


Or why not design a 4 or 5 dimensional viewer so that you can see everything at once, once you develop the brain structure to process the images?

[Draco18s]

Or why not design a 4 or 5 dimensional viewer so that you can see everything at once, once you develop the brain structure to process the images?

I can already visualize up to 6 spacial dimensions, though not easily.  Four is easiest, preferably when 1 dimension is represented by discrete units.

Of course, there are such things as 5 Dimensional Rubik's Cubes, which do it in a different way than I do, but do, technically, make sense.

[Hummingbird]

Or why not design a 4 or 5 dimensional viewer so that you can see everything at once, once you develop the brain structure to process the images?

I can already visualize up to 6 spacial dimensions, though not easily. 

What.

[Draco18s]

Imagine all of 3 dimensional space as a cube.

The 4th dimension is an array of 3 dimensional cubes.
The 5th is a "plane" of 3 dimensional cubes.
The 6th is a "cube" of 3 dimensional cubes.

It's a practical application on how to visualize a 6 dimensional array, every array slot is a finite whole value.  The process breaks down when you have to deal with continuums, but it's a good rough estimate sometimes.

The 7th can similarly be visualized as a line of the 6D cubes, but you start having to keep track of too much information (no really, it will overload your short term memory: the average person can keep anywhere from 5 to 7 different things in short term memory at the same time).

[Silverionmox]

It's also possible to see the colour, texture, etc. of stuff as an extra dimension, which makes it quite a lot easier to increase the number of dimensions.

[qwertyuiopas]

On a computer, you can easily fit only 4 dimensions at a time to represent the rest.

One and two are the x and y coordinates of the monitor plane, 3 is time, and the fourth is a tri-state dimension if you render to each colour channel separately(red, green, and blue)


Everything else is compressed down into these dimensions, and often the fourth one is ignored to allow full colour.

If you use a 3D hologram as the display(whenever technology catches up to science fiction, though they have things that nearly work but most use some sort of trick that makes it seem like a 3D image made of one or more rapidly altering 2D ones), with the same considerations, you can get 5.

[HammerHand]

One of my absolutely favorite games had great isometric display (apart from being unable to rotate the screen), Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  It also had a good range of animations that were suited to turn-based gameplay.  For the unfamiliar, look here.

Why would you use FFTactics Advance as your example?  The original Final Fantasy Tactics had a much better display - and they didn't, as noted earlier, carefully arrange each map for height.  The camera could rotate and zoom, and much more detail could be seen of the available characters.

... Although tall objects, like trees and buildings and cliffs, got in the way a lot.  A whole lot.  On the few maps that used them.

To get around that problem, transparencies or cut-aways would probably be the way to go, and since I can't imagine designating for mining  three-dimensional tunnels in an environment of cut-aways...

[Draco18s]

It's also possible to see the colour, texture, etc. of stuff as an extra dimension, which makes it quite a lot easier to increase the number of dimensions.

True, but it's hard to think in those terms (i.e. what does a gradient from red to blue through green as you traverse the X axis mean?)

[Silverionmox]

It's also possible to see the colour, texture, etc. of stuff as an extra dimension, which makes it quite a lot easier to increase the number of dimensions.

True, but it's hard to think in those terms (i.e. what does a gradient from red to blue through green as you traverse the X axis mean?)

Whatever you want, it's a different way to put data in a graph. Trying to imagine strictly spatial dimensions makes it much more difficult of course.

[Draco18s]

It's also possible to see the colour, texture, etc. of stuff as an extra dimension, which makes it quite a lot easier to increase the number of dimensions.

True, but it's hard to think in those terms (i.e. what does a gradient from red to blue through green as you traverse the X axis mean?)

Whatever you want, it's a different way to put data in a graph. Trying to imagine strictly spatial dimensions makes it much more difficult of course.

Point.  However I was visualizing 4+ spacial dimensions--at least as far as "space" as discrete cubes.*  I could add 3 dimensions of color on top of that if I needed to.

*Like a warehouse: 5 isle, 14th shelf, 3rd level, 8th box from the left, top row, in front.  Each isle in the warehouse is its own 3 dimensional space, and is separate from ever other isle.  Though you can represent the location in just 3 dimensions (40 feet north, 39 feet west, 12 feet up) it's easier to find as 6.

[Footkerchief]

spacial

This distinction, upon googling, appears to be the idiosyncrasy of one Heiner Benking and nobody else.  Did you take a class with him or something?

[Draco18s]

No, I just can't spell.

Spacial, is, however, a word that does have the correct meaning.

From: http://www.answers.com/spacial
Dictionary:  spa·tial  spa·cial (spā'shəl) pronunciation
 
also adj.

Of, relating to, involving, or having the nature of space.

[From Latin spatium, space.]