[Divunal-list] 3D Graphics Support? Um... not just yet, thanks.

[Tenth]

> > New subscribers: please send us questions, I'm sure many of you have
> > the same ones... we'll be taking any relevant answers from this list
> > and putting them up as a FAQ as soon as we have a few.
>
> Here's a question: Is it possible that the design of the game engine
> could be extended to provide a more interactive, visual interface?
> Something akin to the current "3D" online multiplayer games. But better,
> of course ;)

     We have discussed including graphics in some form, but we're focusing
on the main point of the Twisted Reality engine right now, which is to
produce an interactive text based environment. Any form of graphical
interface would be more of an afterthought on the TR engine (and on
Divunal) since we're relying on the many advantages that a text based
interface provides, and while the TR system would definitely make an
interesting base for a graphical 3D game, it would be an almost
completely new project, and we'd like to get Divunal done first.

     Graphics, after all, take up a lot of space, and are much more
difficult to create quickly... and it would take quite a bit of work to
make a game "more" interactive by virtue of being graphical. While I like
to believe that the video game industry trend to substitute pretty 3D
graphics for gameplay is a fad (or at least the kind of mistake it will
grow out of eventually), working with graphics becomes exponentially
more difficult when you add more degrees of interaction, and I can't
exactly blame game designers for slacking off in that department after all
the effort they've put towards making everything look pretty.  :-)

     So... While I agree that it would be cool to try to apply our
methodology to graphics, I can't see how that project could be any more
interactive than Divunal, and I know it wouldn't be nearly as easy to work
with. (Half Life is spectacularly interactive compared to a lot of other
games, and graphically beautiful, to boot... But aside from shooting and
reloading, your other degree of freedom is an ability to "activate"
things. Some of these things are interesting (artillery aiming systems,
gun turrets, and so on) but making something explode or deliver a piece of
canned dialog get sort of old after a while. In the relational-databased
world of Divunal, we can add a new form of interaction to everything in
the world at once... And we do it all the time, in a form that you can
interact with in plain english. As someone who's worked extensively with
the Quake/Quake2/HalfLife engines, that's really unheard of.

	Still, given the state of the art in "interactive" online games
(Everquest, various MUDs, etc.) I like to think we could manage to do
something comparatively impressive, if not as pretty looking.  :-)  

- Tenth

(PS: I don't mean to sound high and mighty about this, but try telling
John Carmack that he should consider adding a Text Only interface mode to
Quake 3 Arena to make it more exciting and violent, and see how he reacts.
:-)