Recent Posts

@Imari: I did changeable cursors with Unity.  It's really quite a powerful engine and you can do almost anything with it.    What I did was make the cursor they had invisible, and then created other cursors that followed mouse position that could change on mouse overs.   

Thanks for the concern on my tablet.  Very disappointing.  I was enjoying doing drawing.  I think it was probably my fault because my dog pulled it off the desk and bent the connector.  It worked after that, but may have been a delayed reaction from the bending because I disconnected the cable and reconnected and it quit working.  I may get another one later, or maybe not.   Right now I'm just going to take a break for the summer and lick my wounds.

What the Realm's folk have done looks really good and I found it very interesting to see how they'd done it.  The game Vampyre Story used a similar setup.   I'm not sure which engine they used.

I tried Unity for a while, but I was trying to do something for which it was definitely not designed.  One of biggest hurdles was the lack of changeable cursors, which the Realm's folks seem to have gotten around by having clickable items (probably just four planes with alpha maps) become visible when you touch or approach certain items.  A nice work around.   

For myself, it doesn't matter that there are fancy 3D engines out there and people making point-and-clicks that can be played in "real time," because I don't have the skills for that.  If I ever hope to finish a game, I have to stick with what I can do.  (i.e. What I like doing. )  I've made the same mistake as Nige over the years, wasting time by chasing after just the right engine. 

P.S. - Sorry to hear that you Wacom broke, Ad7.

I think Wintermute would be a great 2.5 D solution if you could get models into the stupid thing without jumping through a million hoops.  You either need 3DS max as a modeler or pretty much forget it.  One of the reasons so many people use Unity is because you can actually get a model to load without having the same modeling program as the person who wrote the engine.  That's something that doesn't get mentioned much with engines but turns out to be a deal breaker half the time.  2.5 D is really the last doable one person solution from my experience.  Once you start loading complete environments, you pretty much need a team or a pretty simple environment.
The other siren song that lead me away was finding a web engine.  It seems like it would be so nice to drop off a game on Kongregate and forget about it rather than managing a web site, which I hate.

I think its become a lot harder to do a successful 3D adventure simply because the bar is so high, the control system needs to be right otherwise no one will play it, then there's models, textures, watching the poly count, bones animation that's fluid, then lighting, shadows and effects, at least with 2D you have a lot more artistic license IMO

Me personally I should of stuck with one engine instead of swapping and changing, now I just can't be bothered, I much prefer doing random rendered scenes that I can work on for a few days and walk away

I hope Realm does ok it sounds interesting

I've stopped doing it.  Mainly because my computer died and I now have a less powerful laptop computer.  My game is on my old hard drive and I need an enclosure to get it.   I still play with Blender once in a while.  I've kind of cooled off on working on games in general.  I don't play them much anymore so it's hard to keep interested in writing them.  Even worse,  my Wacom tablet just died.  Have no idea why and I don't think it's worth returning by the time I pay for shipment.  Time for a break I guess.  Summer is kind of busy for me anyway because there's so much to do with gardening, cutting wood, fishing and whatnot.

Personally, I think 3d is something that a team needs to do.  One person is better off working in 2d.

Does that mean that you've stopped your 3d work - or started a team?

It's kind of a good idea using 2d backgrounds to help with the complexity of modeling everything in 3d.   Personally, I think 3d is something that a team needs to do.  One person is better off working in 2d.   The trouble with mixing 3d and 2d is that it needs to be perfectly done or it stands out.  It all just looks like a lot of work to me, anymore.   We keep upping the bar on graphics and people end up spending so much time on a game.   With paralax scrolling, that same effect could be done with most 2d engines and it wouldn't really make the game that much more complex since you could use layers when doing the artwork.  Very pretty game, though.  One thing that's true is that 3d models are way easier to animate compared to frame animation and they also actually save file space.

Yes - it's looking very good. Too bad it doesn't look like their Kickstarter will come through. (I've already pledged, and at a higher level than I probably should.) It sounds like they're not going to give up though…

Unity is a very interesting engine. I wish I had the time to learn it - if I had 3d modelling skills, I'd probably be using it right now, but I'm sticking with what I know for my current game. Maybe for the next one. There are a lot of advantages to this approach compared to an old fashioned 2d engine like AGS or SLUDGE.

I know that some of us have experimented with Unity as a possible engine for adventure games.  I just watched a video by the people creating "Realm" that shows how they are using Unity.  Very interesting. 

Here's the link -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq0QLDTrR-w&feature=player_embedded

Sorry to disturb you while on vacation