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Graphic Design possibilities in GM

S

Souji

Guest
Hello GMC,

After many years of deliberating I have finaly decided to go trhough with my idea of creating a game.
Probably a story that is heard more frequently on these forums. For various reasons GM has become my choice of development software. But I do have a question in regards to graphic/visual design possabilities of the software. I hope you guys can help me out with the following question, or atleast give me a rough idea.

The genre of game I will be making is a traditional Turn Based RPG.
And im quite fixated on a visual design like Xenogears and Breath of Fire 4.

Now for the question, is this possible within GM ?
Being fairly new to game development. Im not quite sure how the software holds up, with the mix of a 3d world with 2d sprites. I have seen this done before within the software, but in a different way. With a different type of game. So Im not quite sure how hard this is to create, how well it holds up within the software etc.

Would love to get your thoughts in on this.

With kind regards,

Souji
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Definitely possible to do that kind of thing in GM, I've seen a bunch of games do it.

Some things to keep in mind, though:
  • The easiest way to draw 'mode 7 sprites' is to apply a transformation to rotate them out of the 2D plane, then shift them to the point you want them drawn at, then draw them at (0,0,0) coordinates - drawing them at any other coordinate would basically mess with the transforms, that's why we're baking the position into the transforms. Also don't forget to rotate them so they're facing the camera, too, or they will look flat.
  • There's a bunch of issues with transparency when you draw a sprite with transparent pixels in it, sometimes things behind it will not get drawn, as if the whole sprite was opaque. It's possible to change how alpha checking works (I think this will turn stuff into either fully transparent or fully opaque), or you can solve this by sorting sprites based on distance to the camera and then draw them in that order.
  • Drawing sprites ignores lighting (since the normals aren't set), if you plan to use 3D lighting you should either draw the sprites as a d3d_wall or manually figure out the color to blend them with.
  • Drawing sprites in 3D just uses 2 polygons, so it should be lighter on resources than models. I'm not sure if transformation breaks vertex batches, though.
 
S

Souji

Guest
Thanks of a lot for your reply Yal, much appreciated !

Good to know it is possible, I was already doing some research into the different camera/view point options.
So it's also great to hear I had the right hunch. I will defenitly look into drawing the sprites the way you described.

Thanks again for your reply, hope you have a nice day/afternoon/evening !
 
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