Why no 3D?

[LordEntrails]

Utter nonsense.

Nonsense.

I assume you probably do not intend this language to be insulting or inflammatory, but please try not to use such language in the future when you disagree with someone on these forums. Thanks!

[Frunobulax]

3D support cannot come without enough support of (nice-looking) assets for that, and modules having prebuilt 3D things would be probably needed, too. Many people use official adventure bought in the store; when the publishers like WotC do not natively support 3D stuff there, it is unlikely that there will be 3D maps and so on such that such a feature would not be used a lot (when there would be now suddenly such a feature)

Well, of course it would take some time to work its way through the system. As I said in my original message, it would not happen overnight. But there are a lot of solutions for assets like models. No players have to create them. Certainly WoTC has the manpower and resources to do some simple models. Hell, plenty of teeny one-person indy games have lots of models. It would be no trick at all to whip up a small library of generic models and start from there. Maybe module publishers would not run out and start re-working old modules, but with a standard shared set even that would not be tough, and putting them in going forward would be no more work than putting in a 2D token is. I think if FG had the ability to do this (and now it does), publishers might very well like to be able to spice up their modules.

So, it is not just about whether or not the engine is able to do 3d stuff, it also depends on many other things to make something like this viable for a company like SmiteWorks

Oh, I completely agree - it's not as if anyone could snap their fingers and make it happen overnight. Maybe it would start with something small like Smiteworks just turning on the native support for 3D in Unity and then giving people the hooks needed to assign a 3D model instead of a 2D token. And it could grow naturaly from there.

Before that, features like dynamic lighting are way more important (from which 3D would also benefit)

"Way more important"? As hard as I try, I can never understand why dynamic lighting is considered so freaking important by so many people. Personally I'd much rather see my 3D character being menaced and surrounded by a bunch of 3D orcs than looking at dumb light and dark spots on a map. And as you say, dynamic lighting would be WAY better in 3D

support of animations is also probably something which comes before that, and so on

Support for 3D models and support for animating them pretty much go hand in hand.

EDIT: In general I think that with enough support to reduce the preparation it will surely work out, just arguing with preparation time would lead to denying all new possible features (animated maps, sounds, etc.; hell, how much time I spent for sounds! ), and people who do not want to spend time on that can still use the typical things I know people who build a lot of 3d assets for their games at real tables, and their is a market for these 3d things; so, in general I do not see a reason why it should not be possible to have 3d vtt Just a matter of support and interest etc [/QUOTE]

[Frunobulax]

I spent 46 hours working on an adventure area. 46 hours on top of family commitments, work, errands, etc....
Well, my group of players spent 40 minutes on that. So 46 hours of work on a visual environment for not even an hour of actual game time. That's an example of what your DM would be working through unless they used pregenerated content that already had this stuff done. So... a lot more time spent making the adventure meaning fewer actual game sessions.

The same can be said of any game content, it has nothing to do with 3D or not. Let's face it, most of us use maps that others have designed rather than doing it ourselves. And there's no reason it would have to take any longer whether using 3D or 2D. Is it really harder to drag a 3D model of a bush onto a map than it is to drag a 2D image of a bush? Picture playing Rollercoaster Tycoon or any other game that requires placing 3D objects. It would be no harder than that. And hell, for the purists and luddites, 2D would still be available.

[Jiminimonka]

Ok Frunobulax. Go read the post I made about it already in the pipeline a few pages back. Its coming. Eventually.

Stop trying to flame this up.

[Frunobulax]

effects are nice gimmick, but the more and more emphasis is put on those, the less quality and the actual role-playing diminishes.

I don't think that's true at all. What makes you think that? Why put music in movies., why not just voices? In fact, why watch movies at al;l when you can read the novel and get the same story? We see the world in 3D. Therefore, by definition, it looks more realistic to us.

As JohnD said, timeprep will be horrible.

I'm sorry, but you don't understand how it works. No extra effort would be required on the part of the DM. The DMs would not be the ones making models (unless they felt like it).

Today I waste most time on finding nice looking or creating a map for the VTT. Before pandemic, we played face to face with Chessex wet-erasable battle matt and it was much better and faster than any VTT to set up ad-hoc encounters. But it is what it is.

Your definition of "better" is different than mine. I think FG is much, much better than scrawling on plastic with markers.

Are you saying that you want us kids to get off your lawn? ;-)

[Frunobulax]

I know the discussion here is about 3D visuals, but I think it is interesting to bring up 'mechanical' 3D also.
I don't want to spend more time on assets, so 3D maps are of no benefit to me (yet). However, MANY rulesets include flight and even without this there are situations of higher ground/lower ground.

Yes, 3D does not just mean models, but it would also allow things like flying creatures and elevations. A battle on a hillside? Sure. underwater? yeah. If you maker your own battle maps rather than using pre-made ones as most peopl do, then making maps 3D takes a teeny bit m,ore time. But hell, look at ALL the games that let you manipulate terrain and place 3D objects. Playing Cities or Planet Coaster is not considered to be super difficult.

[LordEntrails]

I'm sorry, but you don't understand how it works.

MOD: Again, PLEASE WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE. Telling other people what they do and do know understand is not acceptable.

[Frunobulax]

I think it would be pretty trivial to have 3d tokens, lighting and effects. None of which would require any more work than the 2d versions for a DM (I don't make my tokens now).

I agree. I've always been a game designer, not a programmer, so while I'm familiar with the capabilities of the Unity engine, I'm not really qualified to say how difficult it would be to implement. But from what I understand it does seem relatively trivial to me, too - not any kind of full conversion, of course, but maybe just flipping whatever switch is necessary to allow 3D assets in the game and then letting the community screw around with it in beta or something. I know that with more or less zero training, I once downloaded a free 3D modeling program, made a basic model, and had it moving around in Unity in very short order. It's not rocket science - the Unity engine makes it super easy.

3D maps is another issue which would be more complex and require either an amazing building tool or very good image analysis to generate a simplistic walled map. I've seen the latter.

People keep saying that making maps would be so terribly hard, but I look at the huge number of games in my Steam library that allow terrain manipulation. Cities: Skylines, Planet Coaster, No Man's Sky and a slew of others have that feature and it's super easy. Raise some terrain, lower some terrain, make some lakes and rivers, sprinkle in a few trees and a wall, and bingo - you have a map. It's exactly the same process as in 2D, just with models instead of images.

The VTT Talespire is going all 3d and if you check out their reddit you'll see the community has generated a massive amount of maps. Personally, I'd enjoy a more 3d environment, even if it's 2d+3d. Realistically I think anything like that is years out for Smiteworks.

Wow, that's fascinating, thanks so much for the pointer - I hadn't heard about it. It looks pretty amazing even at this early stage. I think they have the right idea. I'm pretty unclear about the resources Smiteworks has available, or exactly how much it would take to implement at a basic level, but if I were them I would take a look at Talespire and tremble in fear of the future. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but if I were Smiteworks I would not be thinking "Should FG go 3D?", but "How long can we survive without doing it? Before we only had to deal with Roll20, which sucks. How will we deal with this new competition?" Luckily, the hardest part (porting to Unity) is already done.

[Frunobulax]

MOD: Again, PLEASE WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE. Telling other people what they do and do know understand is not acceptable.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be insulting or step on anyone's toes, but I do not think "you don't understand" is somehow offensive language. I didn't use any insults or anything. If someone said to me "you don't understand quantum mechanics" I'd say "you're right - I sure don't." I certainly understand that hurling insults or epithets or other kind of bad behavior are unacceptable, but I think that reacting that way to a perfectly innocent comment - and with all caps - is overreacting a bit. Did someone complain? I even went back and edited one of my previous posts to take out a negative word you didn't like. It seems that you are trying hard to defend the feelings of a theoretical person by yelling at me to be nicer. I don't like to be yelled at - have you considered my feelings?

[Jiminimonka]

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be insulting or step on anyone's toes, but I do not think "you don't understand" is somehow offensive language. I didn't use any insults or anything. If someone said to me "you don't understand quantum mechanics" I'd say "you're right - I sure don't." I certainly understand that hurling insults or epithets or other kind of bad behavior are unacceptable, but I think that reacting that way to a perfectly innocent comment - and with all caps - is overreacting a bit. Did someone complain? I even went back and edited one of my previous posts to take out a negative word you didn't like. It seems that you are trying hard to defend the feelings of a theoretical person by yelling at me to be nicer. I don't like to be yelled at - have you considered me feelings?

Seriously?

Don't argue with the Mods.