I've been seriously contemplating changing the game to be played from the 1st person perspective (when controlling a gangster), I bought some prototype artwork off the 'net yesterday, and threw it in-game.

I could use some advice, do you guys think the game would be better from a 3rd person point of view, or a 1st person?

As it stands right now, the in-game animations look great, except from 1 angle...behind the person. Also when determining where the player is looking in 3D is somewhat odd now, I take a combination of the actor's 3D orientation, and the camera's 3D orientation...it doesn't seem to work out 100% right....a 1st person view would fix all of that.

I don't know...I'm starting to have doubts about converting the game to 1st person though. If I stick with the 3rd person view, I'll need to at least get some new run/walk animations done that look great from behind the character.

If I go through with this conversion I'd have to contract an artist to make 20+ high quality gun models, and I'd probably have to animate them myself...or pay somebody to do it better than I could. One other option would be to contact authors of "skins" made for other games like Counter-strike, and see if I could use their 3rd party skins/models in my game....that would be the easiest option, there are CS skins for EVERY gun under the sun.

At this point I'm leaning towards sticking with the 3rd person viewpoint. Here are some prototype/early images of what the 1st person view looks like...

I bought a hand model and combined it with a high quality gun model...


How it looks in-game...


I changed the hand color:


My attempt and digitizing my hands in 3d....I gave up and just bought a hand model online :-) I was about 70% there though [grin]


A lower quality MP5 model...If I'm going to do this, all the gun models would need to be the highest quality, like that Glock.


EARLY composite image of what the guns might look like...this is what inspired me to investigate further...


- Dan