UO does use 3D
It's highly possible that it's still a 2D tile-based system, just with pre-rendered 3D graphics, and 3D type physics. Total Annihilation by Cavedog is based on this method, where the units could walk up hills and stuff. The tiles just had height values, and the engine would place and rotate the units accordingly. The physics in TA had a 3D element to it, as cannon shots would actually have a trajectory for firing over hills and stuff.
Kevin
Kev is right... I've seen the tile sets for UO, thanks to InsideUO, back in my emulator writing days. There are 3 types of non-moving tiles: small ground, large ground, and objects. Objects are things like trees and walls. The small ground tiles are what you see on the streets, etc, and on much of the landscape, these are prerendered moved and rotated some of the time. The larger tiles are prerendered moved and rotated, these aren't used for most of the map... these are most evident in the tiles that comprise the mountains. It might have been good if they had just done the 3D thing... there are many places that you can fall into and get stuck due to this method, and there are places you can't go due to a screwed up Z in this method... many of which have been apparently repaired one by one by the GMs as far as we could tell.
-fel
Actually craig is right, it uses a mix of the two sorta. The terrain is made up of texture maps (which can be viewed in insideuo) rendered over a heightmap. The animation and static items (trees, walls, items etc.) are all 2d.
Haven't played UO in a while but I went back to look at screen shots after I read this info and you can definetely tell the ground is 3d, especially in expansion pack where they really use the differing elevations.
Its a neat idea and this news actually prompted me to try a hybrid and move my currently all 2d iso engine to 3d ground and 2d "objects" to retain the high level of detail. Hopefully D3D will behave well for me!
Its a neat idea and this news actually prompted me to try a hybrid and move my currently all 2d iso engine to 3d ground and 2d "objects" to retain the high level of detail. Hopefully D3D will behave well for me!
I think there's bit of confusion going on here.
Could we agree that 2D is (x,y) and 3D is (x,y,z). In that case an ISOmetric sprite based game that deals with (x,y,z) is 3D. It's not perspective, and it is not vector/polygon based, but it is 3D none the less.
A 2D ground map drawn using filled/texture mapped polygons is a 2D map unless it deals with 3 coordinate space.
Then there's all types of issues, like free camera movement, zooming and rotating (all of which are easier to do with a poly-based engine, but none of which are specific to either 2D or 3D)...
---
'Nuff lecturing, my reason for budding in, is that I've recently build a 3D isometric sprite engine (3D because all internal logic deals with 3D space, and maps this to 2D when rendering), and I'm a bit tired of hearing the "but why is it not 3D?" comment 
!!
/NJ
I agree with Niels here - we're mostly arguing over terminology here. The way UO renders the tiles using a heightmap, I would call 2d. I define 3d as using polygons (which someone earlier wrongly stated UO as doing). Basically all the heightmap is doing is modifying the Y value of the pixels drawn. I'm sure someone will dispute this however.
Phoenix
Earlier someone said UO uses only 2d, but your wrong. Most of the good engines today use a mix of the two. They use a 3d engine to draw the physical ground tiles, allowing them to get very nice height rendering of the ground. Then use 2d anmation sequences for the fine detail work that make up the items, buildings, and players.
Usually the ground does not have the ornate detail that units or players have, and until drawing lots more polys becomes a reality 2d for animations will give you a better look and feel, but boy you pay the price in memory. It is also much harder to extend 2d graohics since you must pre render all the frames needed.
I am a big fan of 2d and just hope that 3d will get better so that we can have the best of both.
Usually the ground does not have the ornate detail that units or players have, and until drawing lots more polys becomes a reality 2d for animations will give you a better look and feel, but boy you pay the price in memory. It is also much harder to extend 2d graohics since you must pre render all the frames needed.
I am a big fan of 2d and just hope that 3d will get better so that we can have the best of both.
Craig
Wow, go away on vacation and a whole topic starts up. Glad to see the discussion going on. Everyone keeps talkingabout InsideUO, and yes there are some tiles there. But if you look in the Gumps section, you will see all the textures they use.
The small 44x44 tiles you see in the animation section is really laid on top of the texture mapped ground. This allows them to get real high detail in areas like rugs. When lava is wanted with real crisp edges. One of the bg advantages to using textures for the ground is:
You get a high variation rate, shading, and ability to easily changed a wide range of look with very little work. It also performs better that blitting tiles. This is given you are using a 3d card. There is not much more that can be done to improve the general performance of 2d blitting on the card other than just increasing bus speeds and keeping a larger memory cache on the card. If you look at all the new processors coming out in the new consoles, like the new PlayStation 2 with a rating of 70 million polys a second.
There is nothing like the Isometric viewpoint and I still avoid playing most of the first persion games. But some of the new games coming out are really impressive. One of my favorites (for graphical appeal) is the new Revanent Demo. Wow what game, great game play, supperb graphics and action.
The small 44x44 tiles you see in the animation section is really laid on top of the texture mapped ground. This allows them to get real high detail in areas like rugs. When lava is wanted with real crisp edges. One of the bg advantages to using textures for the ground is:
You get a high variation rate, shading, and ability to easily changed a wide range of look with very little work. It also performs better that blitting tiles. This is given you are using a 3d card. There is not much more that can be done to improve the general performance of 2d blitting on the card other than just increasing bus speeds and keeping a larger memory cache on the card. If you look at all the new processors coming out in the new consoles, like the new PlayStation 2 with a rating of 70 million polys a second.
There is nothing like the Isometric viewpoint and I still avoid playing most of the first persion games. But some of the new games coming out are really impressive. One of my favorites (for graphical appeal) is the new Revanent Demo. Wow what game, great game play, supperb graphics and action.
See the game I am working on at - Lands Of Turmoil you might actually recgnize some of the art. We are looking for atists by the way.
DragonSlayer
DragonSlayer
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