A Diorama Transformed into a Video Game

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Recently I was wondering about what I was going to do for my 100th you tube video and I thought a diorama would be a nice project. And as I was making the diorama I thought it would be cool if I could play it as a video game. So I went right ahead and finished the diorama then made a video game based on it. It was a lot of fun and it took me a couple of days to make the diorama and about 5 hours to make the video game.

This mini tutorial tells you a little bit about the diorama and the video game and how I made the game. And at the bottom of this page is a youtube video that shows how I made the diorama, but at the end of that video is about 1 minute of footage of me playing the actual game I made.

This is the diorama I made. It is of a wizard in his tower battling a flying dragon. I have turned it into a tutorial that shows you how to use foam to make fantasy dioramas. (If you like dioramas that tutorial is here)

Here is a screenshot from inside the game. I am looking up at the tower. I have to get past the dragon, go inside the tower, climb up to the top, get the wizards staff then battle the flying dragon. I show all this in about a 1 minute clip at the end of the video below.

How I made this game

This game took me about 5 hours to make. I could have made it faster and you can make a more complex game in much less time but because I was modeling after a real world item (diorama) I had to create some graphics and find some suitable graphics and that took time.

I really have to give thanks to a couple of people for their work. The dragon was created by Rolfy who is a regular on the FPS Creator Forum and a big thanks to Tyrano Man for creating the wizard staff. He is also a regular on the forum.

I used FPS Creator to make the game. Its a pretty nice piece of software and it makes video game design pretty easy. A lot of drag and drop stuff. The view is a top view and you can see the floor level of the wizards tower, the trees and the grass.

If you want to make a game like this you might want to consider giving FPS Creator a try and I have much more information and a tutorial on it that starts here. FPS Creator Tutorial

Some Additional Notes

One of the nice things about FPS Creator is that there are lots of people using it and making free things for it. A good example is the dragon I got for free and the Wizards staff that shoots fireballs. Lot of stuff you can find if you browse through the FPS Creator Forum. And if you want some really good stuff there are plenty of packages of art work, models and textures that you can buy. I bought a nice package of Medieval Village building that I am going to be using in a future project.

The Company that makes FPS Creator has also released a development tool that is pretty handy. It is designed for creating your own segments. It is called the FPSC segment editor. Here is a screenshot:

With the segment editor you can create your own textured structures. It's kind of nice. You can download it right off the FPS Creator website and they have tutorials on how to use it.

Here is a screenshot of the development workspace. I have placed a dragon into the game. A lot of FPS Creator is simply drag and drop where you place the desired entities into the game where you want them to appear. Then you assign properties to them.

The Video: This video focuses on how to make the diorama but at the end of the video is a 1 minute clip inside the game.