Game News Jagged Alliance 3 in 3D

Tags: Jagged Alliance 3; Richard Therrien; Strategy First

Here is another bit from the <a target=_blank href=http://www.strategyfirst.com/forum/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=47>Jagged Alliance 3 forums</a>. Here's what <b>Richard Therrien</b> had to say in <a target=_blank href=http://www.strategyfirst.com/forum/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=47;t=000028>this thread</a>:
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<ul>2D graphics, given the present screen resolutions possible, have become prohibitive in terms of required memory if you want to have credible scenes and numerous, well articulated animations with a proper number of frames. Not talking about the overall scene details and so on. Properly done, a 3D system will be much more efficient and will look very good indeed.
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Btw, our game contents are not defined by our marketing department.</ul>Strange words, coming from a publisher...

 

Nowadays I find myself agreeing to that "3d is better" argument. As long as it's isometric (or allows for camera panning) I'm all good.

 

After Silent Storm, I'm having problems imagining a game like this without a 3D enviroment. Whenever I play Jagged Alliance 2 these days I find myself trying to zoom in and out, changing the camera angle, etc.

 

Yes, I find it to be good for that too. 3D models are just more fun to play with, also, since you can see all your little details of gear and stuff. It'll look pretty impressive with JA, guys in meltal helmets, kelvar vests holding a machinegun with some grenades on their belt, not to mention seeing the unique merc faces will be cool.

 

and ragdoll FX lol

yea, 3d is the way to go ababy.

 

particle effects on miniguns!!

 

Nothing's wrong with particle effects. The inclusion of particle effects is a lot better than the occlusion of them. Nox looked helluva lot better than many games of its time, including games that came after its time - Diablo 2 for instance. The reason? Particle FX!

 

I dunno, I liked the ball bullets in JA2 because you could see where exactly each of your shots landed (which was handy for shotguns and burst fire, especially).

 

I still prefer 3D models on a 2D background over full 3D enviroments, at least in isometric games, since I like the level of detail 2D backgrounds provide and because I'm not a big fan of the idea that jerking with the camera becomes part of the gameplay (this alone prevented me from buying Silent Storm). Anyway, I can see and accept why they feel the need to make JA3 completely in 3D, considering how much more flexible the gameworld would be and what a big role flexibility plays in tactical games. Well, I can only hope they do it for this reason and not just because 'you have to make it 3D' nowadays.

I pray for a fixed camera.

 

fixed cameras are kind of crap? I like spinning all over the place and zooming into peoples pimples then flying around everywhere. It's CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY and not to hard to operate. So long as they have default views assigned to keys everything is hunky-dory as some old miser used to say.

get with the program 2d goons, 3d is the future to save the universe and generation! and it looks as good as 2d if you have a decent computair lol. ja2 didn't look that spiffy though compared to say silent storm anyway?

tracers mebbe?

 

I suggest that you reconsider buying it. One of the things I really liked about Silent Storm is that you could play quite comfortably in one camera position for extended periods of time (you do have to turn the camera around when you're exiting from the other side of a building, unless you've already destroyed the view-blocking walls and floors ). On the other hand, there are some truly horrible examples of 3rd person 3d camera abuse that should serve as lessons (Mistmare is by far the worst game in this respect I have ever played - I literally could not stand to play the demo for 10 minutes before I uninstalled it). NWN is also a big culprit. I think it's worthwhile to consider a free-moving camera for JA, now that Silent Storm showed that it can be done pretty well, but I really don't think it's a good idea for RPGs or adventure games.

 

I think 3d is the way to go for JA3, sometimes its hard to understand your positions on the field with 2d because it may look like your behind a rock but really you aren't and you get messed up. 3d just gives depth and will make it easier to see shit, i think.

 

3d worked damn great in Combat Mission as well.

You could very easily get down behind your tanks and really SEE the commanding view they had from the top of the hill. 3D brings the Z axis into play - heaps more Tactical considerations involved then.

How would fancy Iggy set up behind the hill, and dropping mortar fire down on the bad guys that Shadow has spotted while scouting ahead? ;-)

 

I'll have to give a nod to 3D. It's come to the point where it can be pretty decent and there are benefits involved like being able to have destructible terrain on a level much greater than JA2 had.

 

For some reason posting a reply to myself just popped into my head. I finally decided to finish Silent Storm a couple of weeks ago (I got up to the missile silo level in January, and haven't touched the game since then - which is bad (the only other game I gave up on right before the final level was Fallout Tactics) and good (unlike SS, I uninstalled Tactics right afterwards in disgust)). Anyway, the last level was a horrible exercise in poor level design and jerky, restricted camera movements (which is unlike the rest of the game)! I don't think Nival level designers could have done anything as terrible if they were constrained by a fixed view camera. I now completely understand Thorndyke's conservative opinion about camera movement in isometric games - free look can so easily be abused!

 

I am very much in favor of a static camera for that very exact reason, voodoo. Free look annoys the hell out of me and adds just another needless layer of time-consuming management that the player has to deal with.