Hi, I must admit that I know absoloutly nothing about making games, I specialize in 3d animation. I have recently completed a scene in lightwave of a mansion with lots of fully furnished decorated rooms and and outdoor environment and rendered a short animation of a walkthrough the mansion. As I was watching it I thought wouldn''t this be and excellent set for a game, kind of like a resident evil style one. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what would be involved in making a game where a chatacter could interact with my scene in real time. Like what software and skills would I need or is it just beyond the capabilities of one person. Thanks lots

Well, first of all, the graphics that are possible in Lightwave are still a long ways ahead of the capabilities of modern 3D engines. Certainly some things can be duplicated, but a lot of special effects and lighting just can''t be done with today''s hardware.

However, if we assume that the graphics can be done, here''s a quick synopsis of what you''ll need:

1. Method of drawing graphics (obviously) -- the graphics engine
2. Some kind of user input system for moving around
3. A way to determine when the user is doing things with the environment
4. A way of tracking the behavior of various objects in the environment -- for example, a vase might be breakable but not burnable, etc.
5. A way of acting out the behaviors from #4

This is a bit abstract, but it should get you thinking about what kind of code it would take underneath.

You can certainly do it yourself, but be prepared for a very long, hard, and often frustrating job. Also, don''t plan on anything grand -- even a small 3D demo can take a long time for one person to finish.

Good luck.. and if you make it, be sure to post it for our enjoyment

Thanks for your reply, I dont believe I didn''t know what a graphics engine was, before I heard of it I thought the only way of being able to navigate through my 3d scene would be to render every frame from every angle possible, I know real stupid but like I said a total noob. Anyway I did a search on graphics engines and there seems to be lots of them out there, could you recomend which one is best? Also what programming language is standard for modern 3d games.
Thanks again

Hey, that''s ok. Back when I started programming I had an idea for a 3D game that was entirely prerendered graphics. I wanted to do this and include free-roaming; when I figured out that it was going to take 50 trillion images to get one level, I started looking for other methods

I don''t think there is any "best" engine; everything has pros and cons depending on what you''re trying to do. Writing an engine isn''t too hard if the world is small and simple, but it is time-consuming and a very massive project. I would definitely recommend messing with an already-working 3D engine before trying to tackle your own, so pick 3 or 4 engines that look cool and take them apart.

At the very least, you''ve got all of GD.net for articles and discussion, so you shouldn''t run into anything you can''t fix.

The vast majority of games are done in C/C++, and (rarely these days) a bit of ASM sprinkled in for speed.


Good luck

Yeah; Schizm was pretty awesome too, did a good job of faking free movement. That is a possible way to go, but it''s a bit hard to make the game playable without taking up 5 CDs

Lol, I did actually
I posted this like 2 months ago and now i''m learning programming
It took me that long to realize i''m not an artist