Thanks both for your reply.
Greyr , i want to make something "official" and not just a fork version of the game. Also i do not want to make something already discussed and rejected as option or something that it is not possible.
Savageorange, i have some of this questions myself. My first and most important issue is NOT to change the feeling and the game play of the game.
I like the game very much and i see the 3d option as en enchansment and not a change.
> * First you have to solve the problem of arranging the view such that the entire LOS is visible on screen. This is not too hard in my understanding, but it is absolutely compulsory, to avoid changing the gameplay.
I think that there will be no problem with the LOS because the camera will be movable. Although the camera will be orthographic , the player will have the option to rotate , zoom and pan.
So if you want to see the entire LOS area or even the entire visible map you can zoom out.
> * You also need to ensure that all tiles are visible, including those behind walls -- if you understand the difference there? Walls need to be visible but not block the players view of objects/enemies behind that wall (whether directly seen or 'remembered'). This IMO is a hard problem -- I suggest you look at Vulture's Eye and NotEye to see how they attempt to solve it.
Thanks for the references about Vulture's Eye and NotEye. I checked both.
What i had in mind is some kind of transparency for the front tiles ( like Vulture's Eye ) or another option is that above the 3d tiles which have some item on them like trap ,stairs etc, will be a visible indicator ( of course along with the 3d item).
This indicator will be the according 2d existing icon ( for two reasons). First because all players are familiar with that icons and will know exactly what is on this tile and second because i think that the artwork that has be done on these tiles is fantastic and can be used on the UI for sure.
> * Perspective is also a problem (as in, you probably can't use a perspective camera), as you need to be able to measure number of tiles between any two places easily with your eye. An orthographic camera -- probably isometric -- would be necessary.
About that a fairly visible grid lines will be on the ground to separate the ground tiles. I agree that is nessesary to know the distances and the space measured in tiles.
> * There is, AFAIK, no problem with adding another frontend (ie. Crawl is designed to support multiple frontends)
That is very good news
> * Literal 'Real time' play is not going to happen. I'm very confident the devs will back this up. Crawl is fundamentally a turn based game.
No intention to change the game play at all. I mean the game to be made real time 3d , not pre-rendered as Vulture's Eye but rather as Diablo III, torchlight etc.
> * 'Real time' animation is possible.. it has been discussed in the past as a possibility. Conclusion was that some changes to how Crawl handles timing/display updating behind the scenes would be necessary to make this possible. If that was achieved, presumably 'real time' animation could then be added to any front end.
That's good also. Even some kind of idle animation , which are not affected from the game timing will be nice.
> * Have you looked into how many assets would be required? I have just investigated /usr/share/stone-soup/data/dat/tiles/{wall,feat,player,floor}.png -- which encompasses most in-game graphics used in the game. Many of these tiles are variations on others, that in 3d could be done by other means; still there are many unique objects that -would- need their own models.
Yes i checked the folders too .
The items and the stones are not very difficult to be made ( although they need a lot of time).
The classes and the interchangeable items are the problem. For example the same boots must fit in many classes.
But it is a project that will not finish in a short time and there will be a lot of alpha versions.
> * You would have to address maintainability: models would need to be fully editable in something freely available and reasonably accessible.
Yes , i am aware of that.