Amusement devices: games – Including means for processing electronic data – Perceptible output or display
Patent
1997-07-10
1998-11-03
Manuel, George
Amusement devices: games
Including means for processing electronic data
Perceptible output or display
A63F 922
Patent
active
058300660
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method and a game device using the same. More particularly, it relates to an image processing device, and the like, for a game machine, or the like, using computer graphics. Furthermore, it also relates to a storage medium whereby these processing steps are stored.
BACKGROUND ART
With the progress of computer graphics technology in recent years, data processing devices, such as game devices or simulation devices, have come into wide, general use. Game devices, for example, are provided with peripherals, such as a joystick (operating lever), buttons, a monitor, and the like, a main game device which conducts data communications with these peripherals, as well as image processing, sound processing, and the like, and a display which displays image signals produced by this main device. The image processing in such game devices is of particularly great importance in raising product value, and therefore image reproduction technology has become increasingly refined in recent years.
One known example of a game device of this kind is "Title Fight" (trademark). In this game, the characters (combatants) are composed by sprites (single-layer pictures), and the background and the like is composed by a scrolling screen.
However, by this means, it is not possible to change the viewpoint and represent the characters three-dimensionally. Therefore, in recent years, it has been sought to compose three-dimensional shapes by a plurality of polygons, and to map texture (pattern) onto these polygons and display characters viewed from any viewpoint.
Known examples of this are TV game devices which depict three-dimensional characters by means of texture-mapped polygon data, and depict background sections, where movement is required in accordance with movement of the characters or change in the viewpoint, by means of textured polygon data also, (for example, Sega Enterprises (Co. Ltd. ) "Rail Chase I".)
Thereby, rather than composing characters using sprites, the characters, and the background and the like closely related to the movements of the characters, can be represented as three-dimensional images viewed from prescribed viewpoints.
Incidentally, in a conventional TV game device as described above (for example, Sega Enterprises (Co. Ltd.) "Rail Chase I"), when one stage of the game is completed, the hero characters look at a map and move to the next stage. For this purpose, in this device, the map is formed by separate scroll data, and at the moment one stage has finished, the screen suddenly switches to displaying a map, without any connection to the game environment (First prior art example).
Furthermore, in this device, there is a scene where the hero characters move by riding in a truck, and in this case, the camera work based on the heroes' viewpoint is determined by the direction of movement of the truck. For example, as shown in FIG. 22(a), if the direction changes at points q1, q2, q3, q4, . . . , at point q1, the coordinates of point q2 are read in advance and the viewpoint of the hero characters at point q1 is set in the form of coordinates (X, Y, Z, A) (where A is an angle). In this way, the camera work at the viewpoint of the hero characters as the truck 220 moves to each point q1, q2, q3, q4, . . . is as shown in FIG. 22(b). Specifically, at point q1, for example, it is set as coordinates (X, Y, Z, A) and at point q3, for example, it is set as coordinates (X, Y, Z, B) (where B is an angle).
Here, as shown in FIG. 23, the camera direction is labelled E, the camera orientation is labelled F, and the field of view is labelled G. Thereby, as shown in FIG. 24, before reaching point q11, the camera orientation is F1 and the field of view is G1, after passing point q11 and before reaching point q12, the camera orientation is F2 and the field of view is G2, and after passing point q12 and before reaching point q13, the camera orientation is F3 and the field of view is G3, . . . and in this way, switches in direction occur
REFERENCES:
patent: 5175616 (1992-12-01), Milgram et al.
patent: 5555354 (1996-09-01), Strasnick et al.
patent: 5598187 (1997-01-01), Ide et al.
Goden Takeshi
Takano Masaru
Kabushiki Kaisha Sega Enterprises
Manuel George
LandOfFree
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