I am trying to convert a 2D game that was a software engineering project at my university. It is a turn based combat game that I now want to try to convert to have a 3D look. I would appreciate any advice on how to get the grid system up and running. I have been reading the Xith help files but am a little short on ideas on how to implement the design. Thanks.
Im not really sure what you mean by “Grid”, but If you mean a “checker board” like map or something, I can tell you what Im doing.
Im not sure it’s the best way, but it wo uld be an easy conversion from a tile based 2D game. My maps are arrays of textured Planes. Then you just display them with an offset, texture them accordingly, and place your models above them!
You might want to clarify in your post because Im not sure if I even helped answer your question.
An easy mistake to make here is to use a Shape3D per tile. Don’t do that, it’ll be quite slow. For a given area use one Shape3D for all tiles of the same shape. The given area size is dependant on the amount of scenegraph culling you want to be going on.
Kev
Sputter…
Actually, that is exactly what I am trying to do. The next question is how to implement the animation of the “people”? I have been looking up the obj and other file formats but am still looking for what would be the easiest way to get a sword to be swung.
Maybe take a look at Java Cool Dudes MD3 loader. Kevs 3DS loader has basic animation support in the last build also.
Hi mmontalvo,
I currently did a simple 2d->3d mapping for myself. Sadly it is not ready for release yet but in the meantime you may have a look at some documentation I found on the web. If you do not need more than one level of height at one time that will be a point to start at:
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg
See chapter 16. It is written for Java3D but should be easily adopted to Xith.
And for that sword animation. Either go for JDC’s md3 animation or look at a project that is not made for xith but shows some sword animation (javaisdoomed at sourceforge.net http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/javaisdoomed/setup.exe?download)
Hope that helps.
Fivedots is currently down. Sorry. I do hope it will be online again