Darkmatter
Rear Admiral
As an "old timer" I have this deep seeded love of the look of WC1 & 2. They followed what looks to be a system similar to SNES games that used that special chip that allowed 2D sprites to be manipulated in game to give the illusion of a 3D world. I guess the first Mario Kart would probably be the most well known example of it, but there were many others.
It may not be worth trying these days from a time investment standpoint to try to replicate the look, but I wanted to ask.
I know the ships were 3d models rendered out as sprite sheets, and then manipulated in game depending on the players position in comparison to the other ships distance & location, but the game engine also was able to know which sprite to use based on which direction the other ship(s) were facing.
I know Howard Day has been working on a 3D with 2D aesthetics project, but I was hoping there would be some info on how it was done in 2D back in the 90s.
Sadly, we don't have free, open access to the source code like they do with FSO, because they've continued to make amazing strides in adding things to that engine. Stuff that wasn't even invented back when the engine was made. I remember one of the small bug bears was the fact that Freespace ships arced at you turned left or right, but I asked them in discord about it and I guess they now know where those variables are held in the files, so they could be changed to 0 to better replicated the WC feel.
Thanks for any info that anyone can provide!
It may not be worth trying these days from a time investment standpoint to try to replicate the look, but I wanted to ask.
I know the ships were 3d models rendered out as sprite sheets, and then manipulated in game depending on the players position in comparison to the other ships distance & location, but the game engine also was able to know which sprite to use based on which direction the other ship(s) were facing.
I know Howard Day has been working on a 3D with 2D aesthetics project, but I was hoping there would be some info on how it was done in 2D back in the 90s.
Sadly, we don't have free, open access to the source code like they do with FSO, because they've continued to make amazing strides in adding things to that engine. Stuff that wasn't even invented back when the engine was made. I remember one of the small bug bears was the fact that Freespace ships arced at you turned left or right, but I asked them in discord about it and I guess they now know where those variables are held in the files, so they could be changed to 0 to better replicated the WC feel.
Thanks for any info that anyone can provide!