Well its official, we are making an isometric game. But of course we have to use current technology right? So DirectX 8 came to mind. But I need some input. We are currently thinking of doing the levels in iso view, but using D3D for all the tiles, while having enemies, etc, as sprites on the world. Should we go with this, or use DX8 textures for all the game tiles, sprites, and etc? And which would be more powerful? Easiest? I welcome responses of all kinds. -Vulcan Game: GodSkin site http://godskin.cjb.net/

Using a 3D API to do an isometric game has several plusses and minusses.

Plus: assuming that all of your graphics are still 2D, and not 3D meshes, you don''t have to really worry about framerate, because the polycount for a screen of isometric tiles and objects is very small.

Minus: using a 3d API to do 2d stuff is kind of convoluted, and doesnt look as natural as something 2d designed for a 2d api, or something 3d designed for a 3d api.

Plus: things like zooming in and out, lighting, shading things certain colors, are incredibly easy to do with a 3d api, and are often built into hardware.

Minus: if using heightmapping, determining what tile your mouse is on becomes something of a problem (this is much easier in 2d).

imo, using a 3d api for 2d will give you much greater power, while providing you with some small technical difficulties (with cleverness, you will overcome these). also, you gain access to things like alpha blending which were death for 2d games since it was so slow.

you still need a good 2d foundation and tilebased foundation if you are doing iso, no matter what API you use.

TANSTAAFL, what sort of technical difficulties are you talking about when you mention them with regard to using a 3D API to make a 2D tile engine?

So far, I''ve been able to do everything with little difficulty (the most puzzling thing was having images vertically mirrored for some strange reason, which I fixed in code). I decided to add a "point of reference" option to the sprites, so that I don''t have to always refer to sprites'' coordinates from 0,0 on the bitmap (rather being able to set it to 0.5,1.0 for a point at the bottom edge in the middle, useful for the way I''m doing my tile engine)... but those are 2D details.

Anything else I should watch out for?

(BTW Using a 3D API for a 2D game is amazing... I have developed a really cool fogging effect using one sprite. And light sources! ... *drool* ...)



MatrixCubed
http://MatrixCubed.org

the technical difficulties of using a 3d API for 2d stuff

1: textures. in a 2d api, everything could be done from arbitrarily sized rectangles. in a 3d api, things are done from textures that have more stringent limitations on the dimensions they can have

2: transparency. this isn''t really much of a technical difficulty, but can easily be something that will hang someone who has worked with 2d apis and now suddenly finds himself using a 3d api. the transparency method of color keying and bitmasking do not exist in a 3d api. instead, alpha testing must be used.


i suppose "technical difficulty" was a poor way to phrase it. what i meant was that from a 2d programmer mindset, using a 3d api to accomplish the same effect may seem convoluted, and it is.