Howdy, For Christmas I got Roller Coaster Tycoon and I became very obsessed with learning how the isometric engine worked (since then my obsession has spread to many other games as well). So about a week ago I started writing my own iso engine with the goal of reproducing the kinds of things I see in RCT and others (height maps, multiple views in floating windows, 90 degree camera rotation, etc). It''s still got a long way to go, but I was wondering if some of the experts here would download it and run the demo and provide me with some feedback. In particular I''m interested in how fast it runs on various systems. The demo provides two simultaneous views of the map. The first view is full screen and you can scroll around using the mouse (move the mouse against the screen edges). The second view is smaller and floats on top of the other one. You can scroll it with the arrow keys. Press ESC to exit. The FPS is displayed in the top left corner. On my PII/266 I get a consistant 83 FPS. That''s what I get with no blitting at all, and that''s what I get with an 800x600 screen full of tiles and objects. Go figure. On my P166 with a REALLY crappy Trident card I get 30-35 FPS. I''m using DirectX 7a and Windows 98. This is my first ever attempt at writing a directx program. In fact it''s my first ever attempt at writing any sort of Windows software at all; I''m a UNIX command line type of guy ;-) I have no idea if it''ll work with older DirectX versions or 95 or NT. You can download the demo from here: http://www.islandnet.com/~toom/iso.zip It contains one EXE and 7 small bitmaps. The bitmaps were "borrowed" from RCT and of course I have no intention of using them "for real". They will be replaced with my own artwork ASAP. Thanks in advance for taking a look... //TOOM

Any real UNIX-command-line type of guy with some self respect would release the source along with the binaries!

Heh - who says I have any self respect? :-)

Over the past 10 years I''ve placed the source to several popular DOS and/or UNIX programs and libraries into the public domain. I will probably end up releasing this one too. It''s too early for me to be thinking about that. Besides, I never give away source that isn''t completely documented yet.

//TOOM

Nice engine. Got a constant 36 fps on my P2-233 with a TNT2. Slopes maybe?

Constant 59 fps on my pII400 with GeForce card, win98...HOw the hell r u getting over 80?! crazy stuff, guess that''s why we love it!

BASSOFeeSH
><>

Thanks!

Like RCT, each tile can have a height ranging from 0 to 31 (or higher I suppose). You can see how the tiles around the edge of the map are all set to 10, creating a wall of sorts. Also like RCT, each corner of a tile can be raised or lowered by 16 pixels to achieve sloping terrain. I haven''t had the patience to "borrow" all 21 necessary tile variations and/or draw my own yet though :-) As soon as I have the proper tiles I will update the demo to show a map with hills and valleys.

//TOOM

quote: Original post by BASSOFeeSH
HOw the hell r u getting over 80?!

Um, I guess it''s my graphics card. It''s a Diamond Viper 550 with 16 megs of RAM I believe. I don''t really know if it''s a good one or not (I got it practically for free). Seems to work well though.

Mark

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Mark

Ooops, that was posted by me. Mark's my RL name :-)

//TOOM

Edited by - toom on 1/23/00 2:30:39 AM

sounds like a fair deal Toom. anyways, it scored 59 fps on my PII 333 (with my 4 mb Riva 128 card )

I get a constant 59 fps on my P2 233, RIVA 128!