Exile and 360 degree engines

[Azel]

I have a problem with (like many of you here) 3D adventure games giving me motion sickness. I am playing Exile (Myst 3) at the moment. It has a 360 degree game engine. I can play it as long as I don’t pan too fast, or look up and down too often.

For those of you who have motion sickness, have you played Exile? Did it make you sick? What did you think of this way of making an adventure game?

To me, it seems like a better way of making an adventure game than the slide-show approach. It’s not 3d, but it is playable by some like myself who have motion sickness.

What adventure game engines have this 360 viewing?

Kori

[StarLite]

Hi kori, I have a really bad problem with motion sickness, that is one feature they can eliminate altogether for me. One night I was so sick it had me running for the toilet. Sherlock Holmes:The Awakened was bad like that for me but not that bad.

Another problem I found with certain games one in particular I don't really want to mention the name, I started getting pins and needles in my forearm from trying to move around the screen. This is why I don't care for using the keyboard to move around in games.  Many a times I've found myself shaking my arm to get the feeling back, and that was only a few minutes of play. I don't mind using the keyboard for keying in numbers like on a safe or telephone.

But the motion sickness and carpel tunnel I can do without in games.

[ad7venture]

Exile was made a long time ago, so the engine might not have been very good and had too low of a frames per second.  That usually causes motion sickness the worst for me.  However, the panoramic games still tend to give me motion sickness and I'd just as soon not play them to tell you the truth.  I don't have much trouble with full 3d, but those panoramic  really do me in.

[NigeC]

i played the CSI games and yes the 360 sections made me feel quite ill

i remember one of the Sonic bonus games had a similar effect.. the one where he ran on a globe  and had to change blue balls into a different colour  to get rings

i wonder if its something to do with strobe effect and refresh rate?

[xelanoimis]

Usually I don't have motion sickness, but Exile had a little something.
Probably the frame rate was too low - that indeed can create such effects, especially if playing at tight with no lights in the room and after a long hard day.
The problem was fixed for me when I set the option to scroll only when the currsor is at the edge of the screen, not every time I move it. This way I could inspect the locations without scrolling all the time.
(that's if I remember it correctly)

[Imari]

Eep, I am so in the minority here.    

A 1st person game with 360 degree nodes is my ideal adventure.   I like to explore and I find it irritating not to be able to look around in a fixed frame.   Also, I find it extremely tedious to have to move those little people around --- clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp-slosh-slosh-slosh --- in 3rd person games.   In some games it takes me a while to experiment with the controls, but usually I can get the feel for them and tame the spinning motion.   I actually become more disoriented in slide show games, because usually there is inconsistency in the number of turns to completely turn round, if in fact you can turn around at all.

I only know of two hobbyist level engines that have the capability to do panoramas.  One is Adventure Maker, but the quality of the panos leads a great deal to be desired.   The second is the SCream engine, kindly made available by the Nucleosys people who make Scratches, which is still in development.   

I was working in AM and loved it.  AM has a very easy to us interface and between the available plug-ins and scripting, I could do everything that I wanted and more.   However, I found the slide show format limiting.  I felt as though I had blinders on.   In SCream everything has to be scripted and, as yet, there is very little documentation.  We're having to figure things out as we go along.... or I should say that the coders within the group are doing that.   Personally I am befuddled most of the time, and am becoming a bit discouraged to tell the truth.   

[Kickaha]

A quickie post to say at the moment 1st person games with 360 views are my favoured kind of game.  Like Imari I find the turning in slide-show games, particularly where the turning is not consistent, disconcerting.

My current game is 3D 'free range' but using custom code.  Might have been worth stumping up for something like Torque but I like coding, and you get to understand OpenGL after a while.

Peter Hewitt's "Magicama" has panorama views implemented in one of the Basics.

[ad7venture]

I only know of two hobbyist level engines that have the capability to do panoramas.  One is Adventure Maker, but the quality of the panos leads a great deal to be desired.   The second is the SCream engine, kindly made available by the Nucleosys people who make Scratches, which is still in development. 

I think you could use any engine that has a sky box feature for that purpose, but it might be overkill because they're set up for full 3d.  I know one guy was using the Irrlicht engine for that but I haven't seen his engine around anymore.  It was called irrAdventure I think. There are a lot of advantages to using prerendered back drops, but I would think doing all that render work would be a pain.  It seems like it would be a lot easier to model some terrain and use full 3d, at least for sectors or something.  I was completely disoriented in Myst exile.  Everything looked completely different from the next vantage point to me.

[Azel]

I probably could not make a 3d AG if I tired. I get motion sickness with any of the 3d Myst games. The last 3d Ag I bought was Dream Fall, and it made me sick also. I can play Riven or Exile. But, I have to be careful in Exile to not pan the view too quickly, or look up or down too often. I was able to play one 3d shooter called ‘Alice’ by American Mcgee. I still had to be careful to not pan my view too quickly, but I could play it.

 (I have a good computer with a fairly new display care. It can display a high refresh rates if the game will allow it. My LCD monitor also has a high refresh rate. 5ms gray to gray.)

After playing Exile for a time, I went back and played a little of Riven, and it felt a bit restrictive. I like being able to look around. As for those 3d AG games, perhaps if they were made to work like Exile where I could click from node to node I could play them. When I move through a 3d scene everything is changing and this seems to cause my sickness. I need to click from point to point and view a static scene.

People who don’t have motion sickness can never appreciate the frustration of not being able to play 3d AG games. Those of us who have motion sickness have been left behind. We can’t play the new 3d AG games.

Anyway, when I finish my book, I intend to make some sort of AG, but I don’t think it will be a 3d unless I can make it operate like the Exile interface. OR, I could perhaps try making a Syberia type game using the Wintermute engine. It sounds like a lot more work, but he backgrounds are 2d. Making the 3d characters, will be the biggest problem. I wonder what programs one has to have to make 3d characters for Wintermute? I think it only imports one type of 3d character file, but I do not remember what it is.

Kori

[Imari]

I'm sorry to hear that so many here are affected by the motion sickness caused by some games.   Just FYI, the Streko engine, which is node-to-node panoramic, also has a slide show option.   So The Sacred Rings, for instance, can be played either way. 

[ad7venture]

I wonder what programs one has to have to make 3d characters for Wintermute? I think it only imports one type of 3d character file, but I do not remember what it is.

It takes directX models.  They are really the most common.  Blender has a directX exporter but it's basically unusable for any engine, not just Wintermute.  The best free modeler I've found was XSI mod tool.

[ad7venture]

Like Imari I find the turning in slide-show games, particularly where the turning is not consistent, disconcerting.

I personally don't think adventure games should maintain orientation.  When you watch a movie, your view point is constantly being shifted to different places and you never ask, hey, which way am I facing?  To me, a good adventure game will show a building far away, then a close up of that building facing the entrance.  I don't need to hop my way along to get there because that's boring.  If I hop my way over there, then I laboriously look around for hot spots at every hop.  I hate that.  I think adventures should be a lot more focused than games like role playing games.  They have people jumping out at them trying to kill them at every turn.  Adventures don't.  I'm not sure how I would do 3d, but I think I would still transport between larger areas and compact a lot of stuff to do in a small area.

[StarLite]

Gee, there are so many programs out there. It's hard to decide which ones to use. I hate going through the whole process of learning one only to find out it's not for me. The screenshots always look so good. But sometimes I think you need to be a rocket scientist to understand them.

[Kickaha]

Like Imari I find the turning in slide-show games, particularly where the turning is not consistent, disconcerting.

I personally don't think adventure games should maintain orientation.

We'll have to agree to disagree then.   I've given up playing games because of losing a sense of direction, as bad to me as motion sickness is to others.

I think adventures should be a lot more focused than games like role playing games.  They have people jumping out at them trying to kill them at every turn. 

That's an unfair description of RPGs.

I like in an Adventure to wander around and get a sense of being in a place.  Not sure how immersive I would find what you propose.

[ad7venture]

That's an unfair description of RPGs.

That's the way they feel to me.  I think the last one I played partially through was Morrowind, which was getting rave reviews and I thought was one of the most boring games I ever played.  The player conversations were a joke really, they didn't even bother to try giving NPC's a personality and I just went around clickety clicketing on monsters until they finally died.  Apparently this was to make me feel better when I got stronger and didn't have to click so many times on them to kill them.  I wandered through endless terrain where I was apparently supposed to ooh and ahh or something, but it just felt like getting lost to me.  Finally I gave up because I was swinging this hammer down on a monster singing "I've been working on the railroad, all the livelong day."  When you're singing a work song to make something less repetitive, I think that's a sign you're not having fun.
The whole premise of role playing games gives them a generic kind of feeling.  These NPC's have to respond to you whether you chose to be an elf or an orc or whatever so everything is generic.  It's like someone whitewashed the personalities out of everybody.