Fantasy Grounds is super cool in terms of rules and dice, no doubt about that. But, let's face it - you can add all the dynamic lighting and colors you want, but it still looks terrible compared to so many other things - because it's still 100% 2D. I mean, yeah, at least it looks better than Roll20, but so does any teenager's web site. Looking better than Roll20 is a pretty low bar.
I don't follow every announcement from Smiteworks, so maybe they have addressed this or have it on a roadmap somewhere, but as a backer of FG Unity, I know I didn't see it addressed anywhere in all the lists of upcoming improvements or roadmaps at the time I pledged. I remember being highly disappointed that it didn't even appear to be anywhere on the radar. Whether that's changed, I don't know.
In 1998 - 22 years ago! - the game Baldur's Gate was released for desktop computers. It was one of the very first CRPGs to use an isometric "2.5D" perspective. You couldn't rotate the camera, but at least it looked 3D from the default angle. And since then there have been hundreds of CRPGs that are in 3D. Diablo, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity, etc, just to name a very few. "But those are huge triple-A games", you're saying. "Those games have million-dollar budgets and huge resources that Smiteworks doesn't have." Well, I can point to dozens of small, indy games that are done by just one or two people that have at least simple 3D graphics - even if they aren't animated.
I was watching a random video on Youtube the other day and came across the screenshot I attached below. I don't even know the name of the game, and the art and models are pretty simple. But they're still far ahead of FG. They show that it's hardly impossible for a small indy team to at least have some basic 3D.
You might think "Who cares? It's just eye candy!" Well, no, not really. We play RPGS because they're fun. We like to pretend. And anything that adds to that atmosphere makes the game better. It's called immersion. There's a reason people turn down the lights and put on candles. There's a reason FG has themes and fonts. There's a reason people put on music or use Syrinscape. Because anything that helps us pretend to be other people in other places doing cool stuff is a good thing.
And of course the visual sense is probably the most primary at all. When I'm fighting a dragon, it's pretty lame to just see it as a 2D circle that happens to have a bigger diameter than my character's little 2D circle. It's not scary or intimidating or anything. I want to see it towering over my little dude! Look at the image I put below. It's not super fancy. It's not high res. The models may not even be animated. But it gives you a sense of the atmosphere and the scale and position of things. But it looks a hundred times better than the current FG.
Now, I know that Smiteworks is not a huge company. I know there isn't a big pile of money hanging around to spend on modelers, animators, and extra programmers. But it doesn't have to go from 2D to 4K realtime ray-traced overnight or anything. I would be happy with just a basic start. And, happily - finally! - the game is on the Unity engine which happens to handle 3D internally quite easily - even with physics support! (can you say "knockback", anyone? "Fireball explosions"?).
So the engine can now handle it. And there are a lot of folks out there with Unity experience. The only possible issue might be obtaining or developing a library of licensed 3D models, animations, and special effects. But even that doesn't have to be a big deal. There are lots of ways of obtaining them, and again, it doesn't have to happen all at once. Of course Smiteworks could make some themselves (maybe just one guy doing the most-common models like player classes, Orcs, furniture, etc). There are also libraries of pre-made models and textures that can be purchased. There are a whole slew of free, no-license-needed models out there in copyleft-land. And of course, players and users of FG could make and submit their own - subject, of course, to an approval process, or maybe only use them locally.
At any rate, I'm a huge fan of FG and Smiteworks and this is not at all intended to be a screed or complaint. All I'm saying is "I'm a customer and a backer and it makes me sad that apparently there are no plans to take the game into 3D. Well, now there is the easy capability do so so - when can we expect it to start happening? It doesn't all have to happen at once." Seriously, I'd be happy at first with just static, unanimated models that move like chess pieces. There's so much that could be done with FG. Of course Smiteworks wants to maintain control and not have it be a free-for-all, and they have shown a lot of flexibility with allowing fans to develop their own extensions. It's awesome and I applaud them for their good community relations. I think that a bold, super cool new thing like this is worth putting a lot of other minor features on the back burner for. I hope they keep up that kind of transparency, and perhaps even extend it a bit into an even-more collaborative effort with the users in the area of graphics and 3D.
Well, I guess I've had my say! Have a fun winter everyone, thank goodness we have games and FG to pass the time!
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