gamedev-GDC web games report 2004-03-31 - By NoiseCrime
Back
Heres an interesting thought, one possible future for Director.
If we examine the progression within the games industry over the last decade
well see that it move from 2D and 2.5D to 3D. Inn fact its now at a stage
where most if not all commerical projects are wrriten with a 3d api,
regardless of whether they are actually in 3D or 2D. There are a few
exceptions, such as hanheld systems that don't have the processor
power,(e,g, Gameboy), but even these now over very convincing 3D emulators
using 2D tricks, and future versions of the system will no doubt supply a
true 3D api. Heck just look at mobile phones, these are getting there own
openGL lite and i think I rememebr both ATI and Nvidia working on or
producing 3D chips for them.
Then there is longhorn or whatever the new M$ OS will be called. From all
reports it appears that is moving towards using 3D api for all its rendering
features, albeit still using a 2D desktop. So I 'd say the reality is these
days the power of 3D is such that it makes sense to use it for everything
including 2D. Those areas which you could point to and say hey look they
still use 2D will either change or fall away.
So from this premise, could and should Director go the same route? That is
Flash clearly has conventional and advanced 2D sown up. It does its job
amazingly well and could in general be used as a replacement to most aspects
of Directors 2D functionailty. So why not turn Director from a sprite based
2D engine into a fully fledged 3D engine, with an extensive 2D feature set
built upon a 3D api? Its certainly not out of the question, although certain
aspects such as text heavy application may have some issues (thats why i
mentioned flash, and its apparent perpetual match of doom towards doing
everything that Director does).
Of course such a switch would not be painless, it would require a very solid
2D feature set, that accruatly supports the current sprite/score
methodology, but I don't think its impossible. Doing this would obviously
mean MM developing their own 3D engine, one which they can update as needed,
and more importantly open up via xtras just as Director is currently.
Noisecrime 2004
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