woho, got it working :)

wow great work!

The power of 3D graphics card!

Years ago I worked on something similar to this (in 2D), for the game Revenant. It calculated the lighting based on normals stored with the graphics. It used highly optimized asm code to do the lighting (on a 300 Mhz pentium).

Thanks! I think the lighting can become a bit better looking. The objects has no defined normals so they are probably all zero. When I assign normals the high pilar sould for instance be alot darker because it is in front of the light. With this technique it should even be possible to implent shadow mapping.

Better normals and a "behind the scenes" look :D


[Edited by - O-san on July 5, 2007 1:03:31 AM]

your lighting could still do with a bit of work but thats really nice what you have so far!

Thank you! I'm planing on an option to do the lighting in a shader. That will make it look a bit better.. but the quality of the lighing depends much on the material properties and the light source settings.

Just wanted to share my updates on my isometric project :) The newest additions is blending, animation and view zooming. Left to do is scripting, saving and loading of map and resources, NPCs, audio...


Cheers! :)

[Edited by - O-san on July 5, 2007 1:00:36 AM]

I am truly amazed. Ive never seen isometric graphics attempted like this and the results are very pretty indeed. KUDOS x 100. I cant wait to see where this goes.

I think this is superb...

I myself have been working on a 2D isometric engine... and I still have not obtained the result I want.

Map generation is still a big issue for me. I have issues with the layers. I have still not implemented them. The base layer works ok, so far, but it can be improved.

Could you point me in the right direction?

Even after reading a lot on isometric engines, I have not managed to come up with something really good.

Thanks! Sure, I can explain the process a bit further. Basic knowledge of texturing might be required..

The map is created from small 3D blocks all of the same size, almost like pieces of Lego. These small blocks is placed together to form larger blocks. Each larger block i a low resolution impostor of my 2D isometric graphic. I determine the dimensions of the block by the shape of my 2D graphic. When I have the shape of the block I must calculate the texture coords for the block:



The red color shows the 2D graphic area, the numbers indicate the texture coords for the large 3D block. 0.0 is at the begining of the texture, 1.0 indicates the end of the texture. In reality each small block needs its texture coords.

The smaller blocks could be discarded, I only use them to get better opengl vertex lighting. I haven't tried per pixel lighting but it should be possible.

Then when I render the block I bind my 2d texture, assign the right texture coords for the blocks corners and turn on alpha testing so that I get transparency.>

[Edited by - O-san on July 5, 2007 1:26:07 AM]

wow nice work keep us updated :)

Damn that is good looking.
Please keep us updated as this is very interesting.

Dan

Quote:

Original post by Sammual Damn that is good looking. Please keep us updated as this is very interesting. Dan

Indeed

Looks sweet! Keep working on it!

wow, i'm impressed! i'm working on a two 2d iso engine right now for the nds so it's great to see isos getting so much love. w00t for iso.

That is fantastic looking! I was just tossing the idea of an Iso game around in my head, and just decided to give the ol forum a look - Glad I did man, that is amazing looking. Thank you for the informative detail as well!

Bumpin you up a bit.

Looking great. Have you looked into MegaTextures yet? Might be a sweet way to apply them here. Also per pixel lighting would look amazing, try it! ;-) Also, I'd sub-divide your squares once more, get even more accurate lighting. With todays cards even if the blocks are tiny on screen this wouldn't be an issue. As long as you're not looking to support like a GF2 or something that is (blah).

Good job :)

That looks so awesome. Are the waves animated, or is it a method of texture blending, or just a raw texture? Either way it looks good (I'm sure it looks awesome if it's animated).

Strat/RPG being my favorite genre I've been wanting to put together an isometric engine which looks very similar to yours. Was there a tutorial that you read through to help you get into this?

Have you explored camera rotation around a dynamic point (i.e. rotating around your currently selected party member to get different angles of the battlefield)?

aah the images aren't working for me. And so much praise. I wanna see! ^^ =D it looks wonderful! Why did you say "engine" in quotes though? What are you planning on doing with this?

[Edited by - Alerion on July 5, 2007 7:38:51 AM]