There''s nothing mathematically different from my way of visualising things, and certainly not on current hardware (where you have to use texturing for any kind of speed anyway.)
Rotations are free, and you still see your character.
It even saves on animation, since the main character only has one orientation!

(kinda reminds me slightly of the old Space Harrier game, though that was not isometric...)


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So you are saying that the tiling technique of

    offsetx*tilecol + (tilerow & 1)*(tilewidth>>1);offsety*(tilerow>>2);    

isn''t going to be faster than yours which you actually REQUIRE a rotation? *cough* *cough*... sorry, but a rotation is costly, and because tiling is PRERENDERED 3D means that the depth is going to be screwed. If you are facing the wrong way then it would look upside down. It would work on a directly top down square map though... Do you want me to draw you a pic of what it would look like (I could edit my engine to do it)...

Are you convinced yet? BTW. sorry if it sounds like I am chewing you out... I respect you man

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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Hey, as far as aiming goes, you could adopt the "hover over" interface concept from adventure games & such. Whatever I hover over, regardless of it''s height, is what I''m aiming at. If the perspective was right and the hit detection fine enough, you could have guys practically standing right over one another and still hit the one you wanted.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

I don''t understand... The problem I see is that you will have an enemy STRAIGHT OVER THE TOP OF the other enemy... But it probably doesn''t matter which one you hit anyway right? You could do an automation that hits the closest one . That is all that usually matters right? Hitting and or Killing stuff?

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
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made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

In isometric maps it''s impossible to have two enemies on the same square at different altitudes, it''s only a 2D map. If you stray from this concept you have a layered Iso map, and you get a bunch of new complications ( X-Com will show you these ).

Dwarf - you''re right about perspective distortions (heck, Isometric itself is a perspective distortion ), unless you do a full top-down map. Well, you''d simply need orientations for every object, not that difficult. ( Hehe, easy for me to say, I''m working on it for my PhD thesis... )


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You could always just use my "Adding THE third dimension" part of my doc for your system. Then it is just a 3d engine that is rendered easily enough .

But anyway: it IS layerd Isometric map, but it isn''t too hard to implement. I have been through the whole design of it. You just add a z coordinate and make all the ''squares'' of your map into ''cubes'' of your world. It really is a simple concept. X-Com was great, but I think that it wouldn''t be to hard to attack anything anyway: Just give priority to monsters (instead of barrels for instance) and just select the one that is currently closer to the character (a bit of math, shouldn''t be too hard seeing as we are working with a coarse world ). The player probably wouldn''t care who it was selecting, as if it was a combat situation then anything dies right? And if they were attempting to talk with an NPC, you could always use Diablo II''s Alt key method for items that are on the ground

Just a bit of thought on the matter

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
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made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

I''ve always taken exception to the argument ''You can''t see behind you, so the game''s field of vision should be restricted''. Feh. That''s LESS realistic. The computer is an imperfect method of representing a rich tapestry of senses. You can''t see the window behind you right now, can you? But you know it''s there. If someone started to climb through it, you''d probably know without seeing. You''d hear him. And just hearing him would pinpoint him far more precisely than speakers would allow. Now, turn around and look at the window for a moment, and then look back. How long did that take? Hardly any time at all. Far less than any single action in a turn based game would take. Do you want to bother with a mechanic for turning your head? Why? Just assume that you''re looking around. People do that. People are aware of their environments.

Now, if you wanted to change things so that you have a better chance of sneaking up on someone from behind, that''s just fine. But don''t annoy the players by taking away information that by all rights they should have.

You know, first person games have the same problem. ESPECIALLY RPGs. I HATE having to manually look around all the time to find that damn magic amulet the wizard I killed dropped. I have a neck. It should take me no conscious thought to look down and see it. First person actually restricts the player''s awareness of environment too much. In an FPS, of course, this doesn''t matter as much, since all you care about is that little bit in your crosshairs.

*pant, pant*

Actually, Chiroptera, I know what your point is, and let me twist it painfully to make my own case

I hate the way my distance of seeing is limited in top-down games. I can see for miles when standing on a plain somewhere flat, yet, nomatter how flat and unobstructed the 2D world is, I can still only see X squares around me ( possibly less with line of sight ). I''d much rather give up some of the sight behind me ( perhaps not all of it, but certainly seeing less behind than I can see in front ) to have a longer, deeper field of view in front.


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quote: Original post by MadKeithV

I hate the way my distance of seeing is limited in top-down games. I can see for miles when standing on a plain somewhere flat, yet, nomatter how flat and unobstructed the 2D world is, I can still only see X squares around me ( possibly less with line of sight ).

MadKeithV,

What would you say to zooming in order to handle large field of view. I''m thinking of doing this for my design: To see farther away, you zoom out. You get less detail with that, and some objects don''t even show up at all. Without changing the view, it sort of simulates your inability to see detail with distance.

Now what if you had binoculars? If I can get the line of sight stuff to work efficiently, you''d zoom in with binocs wherever you wanted on a large map. This way, you could see what weapons the NPC guards are holding several klicks away.

One more thing: I thought about your idea of de-centering the character. What about this? You could have the character constantly face the center of the screen, and move him around the edges depending on what direction he was facing. You''d have to really work to get the camera to behave properly, but when if the character were looking north, he''d be at the bottom of the screen; when he turned to look south, the view would slide him to the top of the screen. I think the game Return Fire (? top down space shooter?) did this, but it was mainly when you were moving. When you stopped, the screen would gently center you again. Maybe this and zooming would work...


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