Why a 3D Fan-Game May Not be Possible...

To be honest, Unity 3D is an absolutely amazing program. Howver, in my opinion, not for what we are trying to accomplish. The programming may be made easy with Unity 3D, but Unity 3D is absolutely terrible for modelling, and while I'm on the topic, you still have to model characters, just imagine for a second how long it will take to make all of these characters that are necessary to the storyline, not to mention the animations to go along with them:

Megaman (Running, jumping, walking, shooting, idle, skate, spec. wep. shooting, strafe,being hit, and roll animations!)
Roll (Idle, walking, running)
Barrell (Idle, walking)
Data (Dancing )
The Bonnes (talking, idle, walking etc.)
20+ Reaverbots (Moving, jumping, shooting etc.)
3+ Bonne Machines (Moving, flying, floating, shooting, dying etc.)
10+ Civilians (Walking, Idle, Running)
30+ building
30+ assets (cars, light posts, trash cans etc.)
Not to mention the landscapes and towns

To put this into perspective, while an amazing project, Jeric Bryle has been working on his game for over a year now, and he has complete only Megamans' animations and the models and animations for 2 different Reaverbots.

That leaves us with Roll, Data, Barrell, the Bonnes, 18 Reaverbots, 3 Bonne mechs,10 civilians, numerous assets, and many towns and building, all that have to be modeled and animated, not to mention programmed.

Now this is from one very talented individual, and this took him over a year. If he were to release an acceptacle game that people could enjoy as much as Megaman Legends 1 or 2, it would be over 5 years! more like 10!

If we are truly aiming to acheive what would take Jeric Bryle 10 years, then we must be prepared to put in a good 5 years of constant attention and hard work...

You cannot model in Unity3d, you can create primitives for certain purposes, but all modeling would be done in a 3d modeling application such as Blender 3d.

The difference is that we are not working alone. Also, some people that started similar projects some time ago have base where to start working. The reason they stopped was because they working alone.

Even supposing we never completed the game, the process of getting things to work is fun in itself—it's because of the joys of game making that people still go into the industry, despite meager returns and endless amounts of effort needed to make a game. I've never made a game before—if I want experience working on one, it may as well be something I'm passionate for, like Legends 3.

It depends on what the fans want. If they're like me, I'm sure they would be happy with a simple demo, much like what the Prototype Version should've been. Then as time progresses we could add more and more content similar to the idea of "DLC packs."

It's quite possible that the entire finished game may take 5 plus years. However by releasing small sections of the game at a time we're giving the fans smaller samples that leave them hungry for more which will also translate into motivation for us.

Also, in an absolute worst-case scenario, if Crapcom decides to shut us down, we only would've wasted a few months of work rather than a few years. lol

Even if we never complete this, I'm sure that most of us will have fun trying.

OniLink++ wrote:Even if we never complete this, I'm sure that most of us will have fun trying.

I want a "Like This" button

It speaks for itself, Rekka. If we can't enjoy making games, we won't even get started!

rekka_zan wrote:

OniLink++ wrote:Even if we never complete this, I'm sure that most of us will have fun trying.

I want a "Like This" button

I'll try to make one.

Just don't give us the Like-Like yet. I have it restrained in the boiler room, in case you're wondering.

From what I can see, It looks like we have a good number of skilled people supporting us; I think we have a good change of pulling this through even if their are certain difficulties along the way.

Well, if we can't do 3D, we could still do 2D.

We could do it like.. Zelda style for the outside world maybe? And Metroid style when you go into dungeons? Just throwing ideas out there.

I can possibly do sprite work to if we do 2D (when fall college classes roll around, I may/may not have free sufficient time on my hands)

I don't care if we fail. I honestly don't. I'll do everything I can to keep us going, but I still won't be angry if it comes to a bad end.

I want experience, fun, brainstorming, a chance to learn about game development first-hand. And these are things I'm already getting. I wouldn't be angry if this dwindled out in a few months. Or if Capcom pulled a "Chrono Trigger 3D" and CoD'd us at the last second. Or if by some miracle we actually got the game from the company itself. None of it would feel like wasted time to me.

So the 3D challenge is accepted.

Looks like an overwhelming amount of people want a 3D game. Let the mayhem behind. The glorious, beutiful mayhem that is Megaman Legends 3!

—The Klickelan Conspiracy!

It's a good name, I tell ye!

MaestroMaharg wrote:Looks like an overwhelming amount of people want a 3D game. Let the mayhem behind. The glorious, beutiful mayhem that is Megaman Legends 3!

Naturally, Graham. It's one of the things which sets the Legends series apart from every other Megaman series, lol. Not to mention it's only logical, since the first two games were 3D.

I think we should aim for a unique, and creative art style...
Something like a cell-shaded, but with nice twists.

Art style is much more strong than the technical graphics. Okami, for example, looks better than many PS3 games, by art alone!

We can try to play with colors more, and maybe, try a different 3D moddeling, maybe chibi, or something more easy to do, but that has appeal.
Then, we can please, and do the work easily...

What do you guys think?

I'm no 3D modeler, but I think cel-shading would be difficult to implement. And the engine we're going to use (Unity) doesn't support it natively (CMIIW). The visual artists' job on this project will be tough, and I don't think we should give them additional burden. But it all depend on the 3D team to decide.

I follow the idea of a creative art style ! but i think we also need what our team can and cannot do exactly. suppressing "crazy" ideas may help us to find how to proper make the games graphics and engine. one track i propose is maybe something "a la" paper mario, i know it may sound weird...but i think that can be fun, not too hard to do (well its mostly 2D work , always easier than 3D i think) and it can provide really good style. For 3D style, maybe something with a strong identity , like maybe something with shadows and cell shading, like killer 7 (i know its a little bit too dark for a megaman, but i'm just giving exemples XD)

for sure i'd like to see a full 3D megaman legends 3 , as i think , all of us do want. question is : can we do it? do we have the materials? the people and the skills to do ? that, i dont know xD

well, i'm just throwing ideas, no offense i hope ^^

One can see that there was already an excellent visual style going on in the Prototype, which was achieved through use of an excellent shader, which well-emulated the look of previous Legends games—not through alternation between texturing and flat shades, but through rim lighting and broad color contrasts. I want to keep that style as it just works darn well, but we also need to evaluate how well our 3D modeling will be working.

rekka_zan wrote:I'm no 3D modeler, but I think cel-shading would be difficult to implement. And the engine we're going to use (Unity) doesn't support it natively (CMIIW). The visual artists' job on this project will be tough, and I don't think we should give them additional burden. But it all depend on the 3D team to decide.

Cel Shading actually isn't very difficult. First of all, the people who make the textures luckily don't have to deal with shading. A cel shading shader program is relatively easy to implement (in GLSL at least, I haven't tried Cg before). It's just regular lighting calculations, but the diffuse (and probably also specular if it's used) intensities need to be clamped to specific values.

I can see why you're on the road to being Lead Programmer—I kid, as I've seen nothing from the others, but that is some great advice there. The Prototype-style shading and rim lighting still appeals quite considerably to me, though.

I'm new here and I haven't really used unity but I have done a bit of udk. It would be very easy to do advanced shaders in udk if anyone would like to switch to that instead. If not I'm sure it can be done unity it just requires a little more research.

About the models, I don´t see any extreme difficulty modelling them, we just need lots of references (the devroom images and the 3d viewer are good start ups) and also some revising until all are perfect. I bet there are good artist here that would be able to design the textures (or use MML textures)
What we need is determination (and we have it) and time to group and plan everything.

If each and every one of our 3D modelers can get to the point that they can get the proportions on a Servbot just right, we can progress from there and start working on other character models. Cartoon characters are harder to model than one might initially think!