Designing 3D rooms for Achaea (GUI Enhancement)

Aktillum

Hi everyone,

A few months back I started working on something that I didn't really flesh out, due to the enormous scope of trying to do it alone.

I started creating a few simple "rooms" in 3D that attempt to visually portray your current room in Achaea. The room design process is actually incredibly easy, if you've ever used any type of 3D "level editor". Most might be familiar with Skyrim / Fallout type level editing, but for this purpose I used a much older (but still efficient) program called Jet3D.

Heres a "concept screenshot" of what it would look like, although obviously this is just a cut-and-paste over the Nexus client:


Here's some other concept screenshots:

Sewers (enlarged)


Ring of Portals


Unfinished "blacksmith shop"



If anyone at all would be interested in turning this into a project, I promise that learning the basics of Jet3d is very easy and you could be whipping up screenshots like this in 10 - 20 minutes once you have down the basics.

My idea is that we could model out entire areas, then take screenshots from a bunch of different angles, then create a GUI package that updates the screenshots based on room ID#. So when you walk, the screenshot angle changes, giving the illusion of "walking" in 3D (frame-by-frame, of course).

Aktillum

Oh and you don't need to be worried about creating 3D models for mobs, etc. There are a ton of free resources that you can use legally for non-commercial purposes. The same goes for textures.

http://www.freemodel3d.com/
http://tf3dm.com/

http://www.texturemate.com/category/key-words/bmp

etc

I estimate if 2 - 3 people worked on this together, an area like New Thera would take maybe 2 days. An entire city like Ashtan would of course take longer, but its completely feasible. We could swap levels, models, etc through a cloud.

Sobriquet

Neat idea, but doesn't it take away the whole premise of what a text based MUD is?

Aktillum

Sobriquet said:

Neat idea, but doesn't it take away the whole premise of what a text based MUD is?

In a way, if you mean the way you're supposed to use your imagination for gameplay. There's a few MUDs out there that have done this though. And of course, this would be a player-made project as an optional GUI enhancement for a client like Mudlet. I actually pitched this idea to Sarapis a few months back and he said the same exact thing as you, but I showed the screenshots to some people on Skype who said it was awesome, which is why I'm just throwing out the idea here on the forums, to gauge interest as a 3rd party thing.

Kyrra

I love the concept and while it might appeal a lot to the graphic gamers, I feel that it might detract a bit from what essentially makes Achaea Achaea.

So many people already walk around with just brief room descriptions on and I just think that something like this would encourage people to look at the pictures more and not really focus on the details that are put into so many rooms.

I'm not knocking it, I think it would be brilliant to do. Like those people that create Stormwind in Minecraft for example. It's just not something I'd want to use myself and not something I'd want as default in a MUD client because I'd rather run with what's been provided for area descriptions and let my imagination do the rest.

Kayeil

I'd probably not bother with looking at the majority of Achaea in a graphic sense, though it's an interesting idea... Might be fun for individuals to do so just to look at their Order temples or their own player housing or things that just mean more to them personally. I wouldn't mind a few random places to be visible like that, but not the entire game.

Skye

Is it legal? I mean, it's not like a personal GUI, it feels a bit like you're repackaging the game.

I'm just putting that out there because I remember many years ago, Chrono Trigger fans attempted to do a fan recreation of the game in 3D and got shut down with a C&D.

Aktillum

Skye said:

Is it legal? I mean, it's not like a personal GUI, it feels a bit like you're repackaging the game.

I'm just putting that out there because I remember many years ago, Chrono Trigger fans attempted to do a fan recreation of the game in 3D and got shut down with a C&D.

Copyright laws are so messy that just about any and all fan-made artwork that is derivative of a copyrighted property could be construed as infringement. My 10yo's nephews crayon drawings of his favourite Pokemon characters could be copyright infringement. So legally speaking, if @Sarapis said "don't do that", I would of course not do it. Though the Chrono Trigger re-make was shut down because it was going to be released as a standalone game, which could be seen as "competition" for the real Chrono Trigger game.

I think "repackaging the game" is a bit of a stretch, this would strictly be a non-commercial (free) GUI for Mudlet, but you're correct that Sarapis could put his foot down if he wanted, because it would be derivative work of an intellectual property. We could even make the argument here that because Sarapis / Achaea actually own your characters, artwork of your character is copyright infringement (and weren't some people selling character portraits here on the forums for cr/rl money?). The rabbit hole goes deep.

Shadizar

The old school nerd in me loves this idea. I don't think it would serve much of a purpose though outside of a neat hobby. Unless the graphics were actually good by today's standards, this wouldn't have much mass appeal, and would pretty much defeat the whole idea of a text mud as was stated. 

I am totally into old school games like Might and Magic and Wizardry though. I would think converting a mud into that style would be pretty easy but super time consuming. I think games like that are probably just muds with images attached anyways.

I would be more for a Simutronics type thing, like cool fantasy artwork images and sound bytes are inserted into the game at certain points via mxp.  Like when looking at certain mobs or going to key locations such as Stygian Crossroads or Centre Crossing. With the ability to turn it on and off of course.

Aktillum

Shadizar said:

I would be more for a Simutronics type thing, like cool fantasy artwork images and sound bytes are inserted into the game at certain points via mxp.  Like when looking at certain mobs or going to key locations such as Stygian Crossroads or Centre Crossing. With the ability to turn it on and off of course.

I think maybe I didn't explain well enough in my OP, because this is pretty much exactly what I was trying to convey. This entire idea would simply be little 3D pictures of your current room, inside the Mudlet client. Pretty much like this:



But the responses here have been pretty clear, and @Shadizar is right in saying that it would really boil down to a neat hobby / something to do, without any mass appeal (or even forum appeal! hehe).

Drot

Well, I at least think this is very cool and would definitely get this GUI. I understand the objection that some people wouldn't read the room descriptions with it, but I rarely read them as is, unless i'm going to be staying in the room for a while. In that case, I would read it anyway...

Sarapis

Daeir said:

Its a lot of work for not a whole lot added to the game, if I'm honest. There's like, over 10000 rooms, as well.

About 5x that many actually!

Medi

Could always go for more environment themed than each room. Outdoors/indoors/desert/valley/mountain/sewers/etc. Still a lot, but easier to manage!

Sarapis

Medi said:

Could always go for more environment themed than each room. Outdoors/indoors/desert/valley/mountain/sewers/etc. Still a lot, but easier to manage!

I had a build for awhile that had environment-themed graphics as the background behind the map panel in Nexus, but it obscured the map too much and ultimately, looking at the same 50 graphics is not that interesting.