Parallax/Perspective in Real Keen Player 3

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GoldenRishi
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Parallax/Perspective in Real Keen Player 3

Post by GoldenRishi »

So in Real Keen Player 3, I remember that The Real Dopefish created a semi-3-D environment, where the tiles moved to fit the camera's perspective. I can't find a video of Real Keen Player (really YouTube? There's no such video?), but a similar effect is produced in the game Clockwork Knight which you can view here:

https://youtu.be/Ns8aVsCMP1E?t=23s

Does anyone know if this effect can be replicated in purely 2-D game engines? I'm sure it's an extremely complicated, but I was curious how people did it without using vector graphics and 3-D models.

I feel like you shouldn't have to employ the full power of fully 3-D engines to accommodate for this effect, but I might be wrong, but you'd certainly need a lot of understanding of 2-D projections and linear algebra.
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Post by Roobar »

Are you sure RKP3 is 2D? Because by looking into the graphics, the models looks 3D to me and the game itself is programmed using openGL. Only the player and other stuff were 2D.

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I'm no expert, but the only way I can imagine this could be done is by using the “modular” method of animating. Each frame is constructed from many small, re-useable images. Each of these images can be stretched, scaled rotated, swapped out and changed in opacity to drastically increase the “mileage” an artist can get from each piece of art. This method is used mostly for animating sprites, but eventually, with some more imagination and experiments, this might be useable for "3D" effects too.
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Post by GoldenRishi »

It's quite possible that it was a 3-D game, that's true. I know nothing about the engine, other than it was programmed for DOS.
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Post by GoldenRishi »

Yeah, to clarify, recently I've been wondering if it'd be possible to make a Keen fan game based on an engine that could account for vantage (but better than RKP3, lol, which had lots of graphics bugs). Off the top of my head, this would be rather hard unless you used pre-existing technologies (i.e. vector graphics and 3-D modeling, e.g. like in Keen 64) or if there was a known way to do this with 2.5 D engines (i.e. like Doom). I feel like given the knowledge of Doom, it shouldn't be impossible to accomplish these effects by using rotation, scaling, and projection matrices on existing bitmaps (which is, I have to assume, the mathematics that the 2.5 D Wolfenstein and Doom engines were built from).


But I was just thinking that it'd be cool to do a Keen game in the style of the New Super Mario Bros games, only maybe with a little more pixel-art-based animations and tiles, for instance like Fez. If I knew how Doom's engine worked, I could probably do this. I think that that would be a really interesting animation style to try for a Keen fan game (Sort of like a 3-D SNES game), but like I said, it seems like it'd be pretty hard to build an engine from scratch, and probably easier still would be doing it the way Fez accomplished it (Just working with a 3-D engine, like Unity); unfortunately, that's way beyond my skill set. Also I wouldn't have time to make this if I wanted, but it might be fun as a side project. Are there Doom modders? They must know how Doom's engine works, and it's got to be capable of mimicking this effect.


If I did this, I'd need a team mate or a consultant who actually understood how vantage works and/or understands how Wolfenstein accomplishes it's 3-D effects using only a 2.5-D math/engine. I can do lots of pixel art, programming, math, physics, and stuff, but I'm not familiar with the way you actually create perspective, and reading the Wikipedia articles has given me essentially zero insight into how to accomplish this, LOL.



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EDIT: No, I see how this largely has to work. The projection seems like it'd be computationally expensive to compute and to perform on the bitmaps, but I'm sure that people have heavily optimized these. In fact, I'm pretty certain that what I'm thinking about doing is nothing more than what people do to create vector graphics, anyways, although a rather toned-down version.


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EDIT 2: Yeah, this is very complicated. Using a pre-built 3-D engine is probably the way to go. Maybe I should ask Lava89 some questions, and maybe see what GameMaker's 3-D functions allow me to do. (I have a pro-copy of GameMaker and experience using GML, it's language, so it might not be a bad option).


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EDIT 3: So GameMaker can definitely do what I want, it would seem. I'd have to take time to play around with the engine, but I think that this could be fun to play around with. Essentially, I'd just be converting a 2-D game into a 3-D game, but this looks like it might be fun to try playing around with in my spare time. I'd have to play around with building an engine, anyways, to do what I want and see how it looks.


Sorry for all the edits, LOL.
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Post by Dr.Colossus »

In Game Maker you can make a Platform Game with 3d Objects. If you know how it works it's quite easy.
I have once tried to make a 2.5D Keen Game about 2years ago. The ground is a 3d Object with a EGA texture.
Unfortunatelly I abandoned it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiCSaGdRK8
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Post by Grimson »

It's incredible how well you managed to recreate the Heart of Darkness enemies' behaviour. Also, even when reduced to EGA palette, the sprites are still a work of art.
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Post by GoldenRishi »

Dr.Colossus wrote:In Game Maker you can make a Platform Game with 3d Objects. If you know how it works it's quite easy.
I have once tried to make a 2.5D Keen Game about 2years ago. The ground is a 3d Object with a EGA texture.
Unfortunatelly I abandoned it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHiCSaGdRK8

Very cool, Dr.Colossus! This is very close to to what I'm talking about, although I would opt out of an EGA color palette (I think I'd like a very SNES-style animations) and add more 3-D foreground layers, but this is precisely what I meant.

Is there any chance that you'd open source your code, or at least let me take a look at it?

btw, your level design is pretty cool by the looks of it.



PS: I was just looking at your Commander Keen 1 remake game, which is really rather fun looking. My original desire as a kid was to rebuild Commander Keen 1 - 3 in the graphics of Keen 4-6. I guess we have a very similar philosophy on what we liked about Keen and what we'd like to have seen done with Keen, LOL.
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Post by Dr.Colossus »

Keen2.5D

I'm still working on my Keen1 Mod. Emerald City is almost done.
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Post by Roobar »

That is amazing! Too bad you abandon t. Kinda reminds me of Metal Mutant and other similar games of this period.
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Post by GoldenRishi »

Dr.Colossus wrote:Keen2.5D

I'm still working on my Keen1 Mod. Emerald City is almost done.
Thank you! I appreciate it.
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Post by MoffD »

Thank you for posting it, I hope it will be finished someday because it's amazing.
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