How to include a 3D scene (or anything else) in a sparrow-powered game.

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How to include a 3D scene (or anything else) in a sparrow-powered game.

(6 posts) (4 voices)

Started 1 year ago by neonhexe
Latest reply from pixelrevision

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neonhexe
Member

Hello everyone, I hope this isn't too much a noob question, I've started only recently to work with XCode, I'm thinking about using it to develop iPad games or other apps.

The question is: can I include a 3D scene in a game developed with sparrow? The idea is to develop a game where characters are controlled a bit like in Final Fantasy VII (in the fighting scenes you didn't actually directly move characters, simply issued commands that were executed).

Is there a 3D framework you could suggest me to develop the graphics (not as complex as Unity, a less complex and cheaper one )?

Thanks in advance for your time

Posted 1 year ago #
Shilo
Master Sparrow

Hello neonhexe,

Sparrow does not have any support for 3D. If you are looking to add 3D models and such to your project, I suggest you go all the way and use a complete 3D engine. There are quite a few choices. Such as Unity3D, UDK (Unreal Engine), Cocos3d (which isnt a complete 3D engine) and others. If I were to use 3D, I would reinstall windows and use UDK.

Unfortunately I have yet to try 3D for iOS and it has been awhile since I've been in 3D development. I have taken a glance at Unity3D and I wasn't sure how to even get out of the "World Editor" and into the programming. Other then that, I couldn't suggest anything personally. Have you done 3D development before? It's at a whole different level and will not be easy.

Best of luck!

Posted 1 year ago #
pixelrevision
Member

Unity is going to be hands down the easiest framework you can use to do 3D on the iphone. That said there are a few other frameworks you can try:
Ogre: http://www.ogre3d.org/
SIO2: http://sio2interactive.com/
Shiva: http://www.stonetrip.com/

If you want simple, and you don't have a team I might think about how to convert your idea into 2D one. 3D projects (even those done with unity) are usually built with a team of 3 in mind. A trick many people use is to prerender their 3d models into 2D sprite sheets and use those.

@Shilo thanks for pointing out Cocos3D. I didn't realize they had this. This is a super nice feature for adding in simple 3D view to a ios application and still stick to objective-c.

Edit: Also forgot that Lion is introducing to help with simple model viewing:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=121637
I expect this to be added to the IOS at some point.

Posted 1 year ago #
neonhexe
Member

Thank you both!!

I had the feeling that sparrow could not be the best choice (in this case), so again thank you for all those pointers (I'll check cocos3d and Ogre, since they're free). I need "real" 3D for what I have in mind, but my plan was to gather a (small) team of people to work with, including in particular someone who knows 3D development, since it's not really my field (and honestly I'm not that interested in it, I only have a little experience in AI development).

Posted 1 year ago #
festival
Member

cocos3d sucks totally at least until V0.5.4 - API is very confusing

Unity3d looks at first very strange - but after a few hours and examples you will love it.
You really can concentrate on your content rather spending weeks on low level code.
Check also their Editor scripts, you can extend the Editor w/ nice tools like Mesh combiners and so on...

If you like to have a FREE 3d framework there is Isgl3d at Google Code for iOS, this one also has Bullet SDK. This one is VERY clean and works like a charm

Ooolong3d is just a cleaned version of the original PVR iOS SDK

Posted 11 months ago #
pixelrevision
Member

isgl3d looks pretty cool. Is it easy to get it into a UIView and integrate with a standard IOS application? I've been looking for something like that to just display simple 3D models within form based applications.

Posted 11 months ago #

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