If you using A7 , you should use Lite-c not C.

Because as far as i know the texture is posistioned based on the posistion of the block, therefore if you move it the texture will move, all you need to do is change it's posistion in WED.

Also models allow greater levels of detail, and render faster as far as i know .

And yes , the textures have to be with certain size restrictions, there is a tutoial for gamestudio which explains this.

I think the game design tutorial on the download page is a good place to begin. It'll take you through WED and building a couple levels. A good weekend spent with just that one tutorial should have you building levels. It does an excellent job of teaching how to place textures, lights, sound- everything.

Dan is still working on his book as far as I know. That would be a good buy as well.

After your comfortable with building levels and using templates then take a stanb at scripting. This will take a little more effort.

The textures can be any size you want, as long as your hardware will allow it.

The reason people use certain sizes for textures is because at certain sizes the engine can use them better. These sizes are of the power of 2.

That means any binary numbers like 16*16, 32*32, 64*64, 128*128, 256*256, 512*512, 1024*1024...etc.

This saves memory because they don't have to be resized. Even if your texture is something like 258*280 the engine will go to the next power of 2 > being 512*512! Shows just how memory is wasted! LOL. If you use .dds, i think it is mandatory that you use a power of 2 texture size.

I don't recommend you go above 2048*2048. Only use that in the case that you maybe have a terrain that you really want to show details. But there are better methods to achieve that.

I don't think many GPUs can handle anything over 4096*4096 or even that, i haven't looked into it.

He declared in that book that his games sell 6 figures a year ( 100.000 - 900.000 usd )
He has 10 new games in his catalogues
If I take his words literally we are not far away from a turnover ( annual revenues of his company , not number of copies of course ! ) in terms of milion dollars

Should his turnover be of " only " (sic) hundreds thousand dollars ..well in my opinion he his a pro
The difference between mr Vogel ( a pro ) and me ( an amateur)is :

He can afford to spend the whole day in game programming ( me some hours a week )
He has 20 years experience in game programming ( me just 3 - 4 years)

Consequently I dont try to do what mr Vogel does ( not to mention Oblvion )
I prefer to focus on small casual games

This is my 2 cents suggestion to the newbies

Wow I have here more info and great tips I could have imagined

So I tried to make the street things as models and it really is better way (slower though). I can get much more detail in the street (and other things :D)... The skins are usually the problem but now I haven't had any problems yet; which is a miracle...

Sorry for bursting in here like that, just read the whole thread and I think it's really interesting.

About the "pro or not"-question: In my oppinion, being a pro doesn't mean to spend all your freetime with 3DGS or any other software. To me, also somebody who actually earns his/her money with game-development isn't necessarily a pro. In my opinion a pro is somebody who is capable of doing anything he wants with his software in an acceptable amount of time without having to ask anybody else how things work. You may say now: "Hey, then that's me!" - well, I'm registered in this really cool forum for about a year now and in my opinion there are a lot of semi-pros and pros running around here

About the RPG-Question. The term "RPG" has a very large range - many people would even call Zelda an RPG (which isn't correct in my opinion). The pure RPG-genre today is mainly represented by the Final-Fantasy series for PS/2/3 and *some* other series like ShinMegamiTensei: a straight-forward game, the player doesn't have much freedome of movement and decicions, BUT what you will get in exchange is a thrilling story, a tactical (turn-based) combat-system and multi-faceted characters (FFXII however totally failed in this last point).
On the one hand we have those "classic" RPGs and on the other hand we have the Action- or Adventure-RPGs. They are (as their name implies) mixtures between diverse genres. Thinking about Spellforce and the old Baldur's Gate there have also been Strategy-RPGs. But except for a levelling-up-system they normally don't have much in common with the old-school-RPGs. And sometimes not even the level-system is included, talking about Zelda. The only thing these games have in common with a *real* RPG are a lot of characters and story, but nothing else. Oblivion itself is definitly an action-adventure-RPG and as such has to reduce its content in terms of a complex fighting system - in exchange you get a gameplay and moreover a *feeling* that you will only rarely find in other games. I love Oblivion, and I liked Morrowind, but I'm also a big fan of FinalFantasy and old-school-RPGs. But in my opinion you shouldn't call Oblivion an RPG... it's just that there is no real name for this genre.

The eye-candy-thing. I really agree with ghostyrider - there are hundreds of 3rd-person-shooters with amazing graphics. No one wants to play another one because if you know one of them, you basically know them all (however, the developers must be selling them like mad, otherwhise there wouldn't be so many of those shooters out there...). If you want to have success with your game and actually plan to earn money with it then you have to set way different aims and goals. I always claim that graphics are secondary, primary you should go for gameplay, which means: good control via keyboard&mouse, a satisfying camera-system which the player doesn't have to adjust after every corner, intelligent puzzles, a comfortable inventory-menue (if you have one), a well-balanced gameplay to avoid frustration because of a single enemy and so on. Try to attract the players by your ideas and the content of your game and not so much by its graphics. Why? Because you can't keep up with a whole professional studio working at the graphics of a single game for more than one year. Basically, if the player is able to identify an object - that's enough, every further minute you work on the model is sort of a "bonus". For example, look at World of Warcraft! Did you ever see its graphics? They are (compared to console graphic standards) nothing but a joke! And even so - *millions* of players play it every day. Why? Because of the gameplay. If you say "I'll never get a MMORPG to work all by myself" then you are probably right - that is a really BIG task. But what about the good old Tetris? How many people got addicted to it when it first came out? But that sensation was surely not based upon its graphics *lol* It was based upon the idea behind it. And now go for it, learn to handle 3DGS and show us your ideas!



Greetz!




Alan

I do not know what your budget is so I am going to start small.

Get your self a modeling programme that you enjoy working with. If you do not like the interface of one or how it works then move on to another. There are some 3D Modelers listed on the wiki. MED imports .fbx and .x for nonanimated and animated models. It imports .obj and .3ds as well for static models. So make certain that the modeler you choose can export any one of those formats. OR that your modeler can export to 3d GameStudio .mdl format.

Milkshape is very inexpensive and exports directly to .mdl7 format. Milkshape Video Tutorials Free These are very well done and you will learn Milkshape modeling in no time.

Here are some resources. Use as many outside resources as possible to cut down on your workload so you can concentrate on the features that are unique to your game. Apples are apples Literally. So do not recreate an apple model if you find one that looks good to you. Most furniture can be used from outside sources but if you want a special throne for your villian then spend your time designing that with the look you want to give it.

Watch your scripts and make sure they say .c then they will be Lite-C. .wdl is C-Script.

Player movement
Dracula's walk script in Lite-C If you purchase IntenseX AI listed below it may already have a movement script.

Terrain
Mysty Moods by Loopix This will give you some awesome outdoor levels. He is excellent at making plants. He has some free plants but if you can afford it support him and purchase some from his site. I purchased his plant packs and am very happy with them.
Vegetation Template OR you can purchase Seed It

AI and scripting
IntenseX AI I talked with them about rpg elements and they are going to come out with a rpg one. So start with the copper version and keep up with the updates. You may not even have to do a lot of scripting if you get this. HOWEVER I would get familiar with Lite-C so you can do some custom scripts if need be. I have hired programmers but I am still going to mess around with Lite-C and try some things on my own just to learn it and become familiar with it.

Textures
CG Textures You can download 15mb per day for free. So bookmark this site and start downloading. Be failthful in downloading textures every day and you will have a nice library. I subscribe to this site and it is excellent. If you can afford to then pay for a subscription as to support this gentleman but if not he is very generous in letting non subscribers have free downloads.

Models and Textures
Terminal 26 They have free models and textures and terrain on this site that you can download. Their model packs are inexpensive so you can purchase those. Some models you will have to retexture but at least they are mapped already for you.
GameBeep
Rincewind's Medieval Houses Rincewind did an excellent job on these. Do not forget to grab the human model character Pappenheimer did on page 3. Do not forget to keep tabs on what you are using so you can include these people in your credits.
Medieval Weaponry Inexpensive

Main Menu Template This is .wdl which means C-Script. Hang on to it and you can convert the script to Lite-C later. It will be practise for you to get familiar with Lite-C and how it works. OR you can go through User Contributions or Lite-C User Contributions to find one you will not have to convert.

Human Characters and creatures
Fragmotion for animations.
My advise is to learn how to make nonanimated models first. The Milkshape videos or other tutorials depending on which modeler you choose will help you learn modeling. Then learn how to animate something simple like a book opening or a chest lid that opens. You can also purchase human character models that are not animated and animate them yourself or use bvh motions. TrueBones has bvh motions and will send you a few free that way you can see if you want to use those or not.

RPG Elements
Both of these are in Lite-C.
Inventory Morrowind style
Drag N Drop

Game development is hard work but also very enjoyable. Enjoy the process. Know your weak areas and either hire someone to handle that aspect of it or if you are on a small budget you can offer to do a trade. You can do something your are good at in exchange for something you are not.

Other advise
Watch the forums daily. You may pick up ideas and things you did not know.

Use the forum search button. Narrow it down to the category you would most likely find it in so you can get more results. ie To look for information on shaders look in either Shaders or Starting with GameStudio forum categories. Shaders that come up in C-Script and WDL is not going to help you if you are looking for Lite-C.

This forum is limiting for words like LOD as it will not search a 3 lettre word. So go to google and type in LOD and "3D Game Studio" or "3D Gamestudio" to try and find what you are looking for from there. I have done it that way and found information on these forums by doing my short word searches through google as these forums come up in google searches.

Download any demos you see that uses Lite-C and run it to see what it does. Then open the models in MED and see how they were skinned and study how the models were constructed. Go in WED and look at the behaviour tab and see what script they are attached to then look in SED and study the code to see what drives it. You will learn a lot that way.

You can search google for 3D models as there are quite a few for free out there or even inexpensively. If you are going commercial make sure to read the license agreements.

Sorry I don't have time to read that post of yours yet as I must go in few sec but shuld i make the buildings as modelS? like the walls and windows and then add and place them in WED?

Thanks ill read that later

I would do that Vilde. Do not use level or block geometry. It takes longer to do a build and models imho look better and do build faster.

I will see what I can find for a free medieval human character mesh so you can start out with something.

yer, but you need to know , map entities need to act as doors, i think