New Version of Visioniare?

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I am curious how the situation is evolving, in the discussion about version 4 was said that something new will be released in few days, but after that it was nothing posted for a while and this thread got on the 3rd page.

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really?
we still seem to be on page two

discussion?

with some luck the upcoming version should be ready soon; well, as soon as it's ready rather!

That teasing is cruel

Happy new year to Visionaire and the community.

There is something I'd like to point out here, even If I run out of topic: all screens are flat (and they become even flatter). They have only a x- and a y-axis. They don't have a y-axis. Therefore 3D, in its final result, simulates the z-axis on your screen. (in the case of 3D for both - the developer and the consumer). But there can't be "real 3D" on a flat screen. There is only a small difference between 2D-games and 3D-games. 2D-games simulates the z-axis "psycho-optical", like the italian painter Leon Battista Alberti taught in the 13th century. 3D simulates the z-axis (on your screen) on the base of mathematic objects.

On the very end, visually, if you sit in front of your monitor and play, the output is the same: a (moving) picture.

The problem is, that perspective isn't as good implemented in computers as in painting. Lightning is a problem (see above). And in visionaire f. e. character-scaling if you have a horizontal perspective. Normally you scale the character along the y-axis (down and up), so what is up, is the background, what is down is the foreground. A painter can make a figure smaller or bigger on the same height of the y-axis. The painter can paint things in the front with a little more red, things in the distance a little more blue.

Take a photography or go in a museum and have a look on paintings. These are pure 2D and their illusion of space is far beyond of so called "3d-games" You won't get more realism with 3D as we are on flat screens.

For me, with the look of a non-programmer on it, the discussion between 2D and 3D points in the wrong direction. The only question is: how is the z-axis implemented on screens.

I wrote this to point out, that the solution to the problems described above mustn't be 3D. It could also be a more clever 2D.

Just if a 2D scene could consist of more than one backround an every background had its own waypoints-system and the figure could change between those backgrounds in one scene - you could perhaps scale/animate/simulate the figures walk on the z-axis by swithing between layered backgrounds?

hmm... not sure what prompted that epic post of yours!

A 2D game is made up a single camera (static) & multiple flat images that are layered on top of one another. The z-depth or the illusion that the scene has a 3 dimensional perspective is done by the perspective point & the scale (size) of the artwork, scene & objects etc...

A 3D game can contain multiple cameras (static & non-static) which you allow you to fluidly change/navigate to a new perspective view within the scene. You can also add multiple light source points that seem to be able to emulate light & shadows within a scene fairly realistically, which is something that is very hard to do in pure 2D games.

Of course it's not going to be popping out of the screen at you like the 3D movies you see at the cinema or on your 3D TV sets.

As for the last part of your post: you can add multiple backgrounds as objects as well as multiple light maps & way systems too, which you can quite easily change/cycle between via action parts in the editor.

One thing I would like to see is dynamic lighting. As another member on here pointed out to me that the light maps would be a lot more effective if they only affected the area of the character that they were touching in a similar fashion to that of the old masking methods. I agree with this but I think additionally that it would also be nice if we could add multiple light maps to each scene & set a min/max z-depth (object center) value so that we can declare what part of the scene they should affect & also we should be allowed to have them affect objects in the scene too or maybe even the background. Finally another ideal would be if we could declare that the light maps only affect a certain side/amount of the object/character by setting a percentage value &/or from direction or something to create the illusion that the light is only hitting one face/side of the object/character in a similar fashion to that of 3D lighting. - This paragraph is complete theory/babble off the top of my noggin' mind.

I don't care so much about 3D. For me, graphic adventures are about content and story, so I'd rather applaud improvement in the work flow with visionaire, i. e. copy-paste of multiple action parts, opening multiple windows, handling via keyboard etc.

'ack no not the dreaded floating windows!

One of the things I hated about the majority of music production daws & older versions of adobe photoshop was the bloody floating windows & device/tool blocks.

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hmm... not sure what prompted that epic post of yours!

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As for the last part of your post: you can add multiple backgrounds as objects as well as multiple light maps & way systems too, which you can quite easily change/cycle between via action parts in the editor.

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Wow. Didn't know that. Thanks to you my novel got a point Is there some example so I could see how this is done?

create a transparent .png at the same size of the background image of your scene & use the transparent image as the main background then add the other backgrounds you mentioned as scene objects which you can change between via linked conditions or by fading in/out between the backgrounds as required.

you can set a new light map for scenes via: "scene > set lightmap" action part & you can change the way system for a scene via: "scene > change way system" action part.

inside of the way system editor is an action area system in which you can create areas that can contain actions which can be triggered when a linked character enters/leaves (or both) the area.

P.S: the transparent background thing & multiple layered backgrounds in objects is the same method used for creating parallax scrolling by editing the scroll factor x/y settings inside of the "effects" tab of a scene object.

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'ack no not the dreaded floating windows!

One of the things I hated about the majority of music production daws & older versions of adobe photoshop was the bloody floating windows & device/tool blocks.

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I'm pretty sure we are talking about different things. :-)

Right now, if I have an action in dialogue x and I want to refer to that while editing an action in dialogue y (or wherever), I have to close the action part (I can move the window, hooray, but I can't even resize it), go to dialogue x, open the action, memorize it (or make a screenshot), close it, go back to dialogue y, find the action again and open it and... feel the tenosynovitis coming up!
Opening multiple windows and having standard features like in most other MS Windows applications would make this much faster.

And for me - personally - this is much more important and worth money that I would pay for a new version than the support of 3D models and scenes. (Which would be a cool feature, no doubt. But also cool would be a spine runtime support.)

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And for me - personally - this is much more important and worth money that I would pay for a new version than the support of 3D models and scenes. (Which would be a cool feature, no doubt. But also cool would be a spine runtime support.)

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not entirely sure what you are talking about with the rest of your post but it will be 3d characters only & not 3d scenes although technically you could import a 3d object as a character to use in a scene. Yeah not really something I care much about either seeing as I'm a firm believer that point & click adventure games should remain in full 2D, but each to their own.

David was talking to me a while back about the possibility of adding support for spine or one of the other ones - I think it was spine anyway but not sure if it will happen & if it does then I've no idea when.

The main feature of the next update 3.8 or 4.0 whichever it is that gets released will be cross-platform support. Stable support for windows, mac & iOS I believe & possibly beta support versions for linux & android (maybe if they are sorted in time) - that & a major overhaul, bug fixes, memory management stuff & a couple other new features & some additional lua commands etc... I don't have a changelog to list everything nor a definitive release date to share other than a predicted Q1 2014 release.

And all that sounds really good!