New Version of Visioniare?

I would first like to get version 3.8 and then later decide if I ever require to upgrade to version 4.

Hi Tom,
unfortunately kickstarter is not available here in germany. So its pretty hard for us to do a campaign. But it would be a great chance to raise some money and enhance the development - thats for sure!

You don't have to wait long for the next version. Development is going pretty well these days and i think its just a matter of weeks until it will be released...

"matter of weeks" is maybe a little bit too optimistic (the release won't be finished this year). But we're making good progress and have a clear task list what's missing for the next release - it will be in the foreseeable future

It would be great to have an 'official' word on this instead of this giant thread, whenever you guys have the time as can only imagine how busy you all must be!

this is as official as it gets

This is really cool. So there will be an update in early 2014 with Mac, Linux, iOS, & Android support added?

When you say you're working on 2.5d, what do you mean by that - do you mean first-person panoramic interface like Myst 3/4? Because if you could get that working as well, it'd completely seal the deal for me. I've tried at least five or six other toolsets ... none of them has all of the three things I'm hoping to see combined in one package:

- fast, user-friendly development tools for adventure game creation
- an effective 3d-looking panoramic toolset
- cross-platform output

I get the sense from my tests of Visionaire that your software is already great at the first of those three, and will likely soon be great at the others too. If you can get v4 done soon, and it has the cross-platform outputs and panoramic features, I'm prepared to pay well above the current 35-euro asking price for the convenience of a largely GUI-based toolset.

If not... I'll probably stick with Dagon which has a less user-friendly workflow but is a good panoramic adventure-game engine nonetheless with Mac/PC/Linux outputs already working and iOS/Android output on the way soon.

2.5D is 3D character support but still uses 2D backgrounds.
If you wanted full 3D support then you might be better off using unity or udk instead maybe?

unity supposedly has some modules/plugins geared towards adventure game creation.

I'm not sure if they are working on android platform support yet or focusing on the others first. Maybe Alex will confirm which platforms will be ready for the next release or 4.0, which as far as I'm aware will be vs3.8 but I'm not 100% sure as the next release version keeps going backwards & forwards & I'm a bit lost in which version it will be.

As far as I'm aware it is just for 3D character support which you could also (probably) import 3D objects into as well!? There are some light & shadow settings on an old old version of the2.5D support that I have seen but Alex or better yet, his friend who is adding the 2.5D support would be able to tell you exactly what is possible/how it will work... I'm not sure if Alex' friend is active/a member on here mind?

I have not played secret files on pc. I had a little go on a nintendo ds but wasn't too impressed in how it functioned on the ds, so maybe I will try it on the pc at some point

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Hi there,

> 2.5D is 3D character support but still uses 2D backgrounds.

hm... is that right? I think - only partially. What about 3D-models of worlds? Many of the actual 2.5D-adventuregames, like "secret files", uses 3D-maps, 3D-objects _and_ 3D-characters. Using of 3D-worlds lets you take advantage of 3D-elements, like lighting and shadowing, interaction and so on. I think there is a difference between 2D, 2.5D and 3D.

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I don't think there is anything 3D in Tunguska besides characters. The scenery is build in 3D but rendered as well as animations which are then imported and handled as 2D objects...


Btw, because it fits the topic, I recently found something which might be of interest:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/finnmorgan/sprite-lamp-d...

aye sounds about right

the only way I can think of to add lighting & shadows to your scenes is to manually draw them in yourself if you are doing everything in 2D or alternatively create your scene in a 3D program (I'm not savvy with 3D stuff) & then sort out all the shadows & lighting in the scene for that.

In the new broken sword game for instance it is completely 2D but they created their characters in a 3D program & then exported the character animations out frame by frame & imported them into their own game engine (Virtual Theatre) ... I noticed that some of their character animations seemed to have lighting & shadows added to them so I was wondering if maybe they added their 2D scenes as a background to the 3D program so they could set their characters to certain areas of the scene to then add lighting/shadows to their characters as needed. Just an idea/theory on my part.

There is no way to add true/dynamic lighting/shadows to 2D games as we don't have 3D support for adding cameras/lights etc but you can probably add something at least halfway decent with some workarounds & a bit of effort.

there won't be any 3d-models of the world. If you really need a super realistic 3d environment with correct shadows and lighting it is probably better to use a 3d engine. Besides the effort to create a full 3d engine (which we can't handle) it would be too complicated to use anyway. Visionaire should be easy to use for everybody and still allow to create high quality games.

Daniel implemented the 3d characters as part of a university project and also wrote a very good and detailed paper about it. If you're interested you can find more information about the implementation here:
http://www.supremer.de/visionaire.pdf