cairnswm,

I agree, I bought the same book and while it did help me it was not everything I thought it would be, didint answer many in depth questions that it could easily have.

it really only covered things that didnt apply to real-world game development, I had to develop many techniques on my own which should have been explained, and if it wasnt for Mike and other tallented people here on this forum I might never have succeeded.


A lot of people seem to think that everything has been written on isometric problems, but like the problem i just faced i wasnt able to find anything on it, and i can imagine that this would be a major blocker for most game developers.

I was thinking of writing an article on the solution to the problem I had, though i''m not sure I have the time for it, or if it''s my place since I didint develop the solution.

This is pretty much the only forum I freuqent so it''s a shame to see it slow to a trickle.


Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com



Voice your discontent! help stop the flames!

quote:Original post by EDI

I was thinking of writing an article on the solution to the problem I had, though i''m not sure I have the time for it, or if it''s my place since I didint develop the solution.


Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com



Voice your discontent! help stop the flames!

If you''re talking about the problem I helped you with, feel free to write an article about it. I didn''t realize it was a common problem. I don''t have an iso engine, so I probably wouldn''t be the ideal person to write about it since I couldn''t provide source code utilizing an iso engine. But if it could help other people, I''d think it would be cool for somebody to write about it.

Cool=)

Then I will work on it in my spare3 time =D

lol

ive actualy just made an agreement with another game designer who has done a huge amount of work in resources for a (please dont flame me) MMORPG, i''ve been communicating with him the last four years he''s been developing the story stats maps, details, sounds graphics etc. for it, he is not a great programer though so i''ve made a deal with him that i will weld his resources together using my game engine for a 50% cut of NET Profits on sale of the game, so that should be good, of cource we are looking at atleast a year or two of development time, especialy with my current project in full blast =D

but yes, if anyone else feels that an article should be written on correct rendering of a diamond isometric map that needs to use structures that are more than 1 tile area large please let me know, and i''ll see what i can do =)


Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com



Voice your discontent! help stop the flames!

Regarding this forum dying, I keep saying they should rename it to 2D graphics and theory, or something. Since both ISO and 2D are getting rather small, a combined forum might attract more attention.

Sup Mr.Maniac the 2D Enthusasit himself =)

I agree ''Isometric Land'' doesnt really strike the feeling of professionalisim into my heart, 2D Graphics and Theory would be a much better title to the forum and might encourage more people to frequent here since it wont seem to be limited to Isometric and Tile based game development.



Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com



Voice your discontent! help stop the flames!

The one advantage I have with 3d over 2d is the speed and graphic detail. I really shouldnt have to explain but I will just in case.

You cant really get good performance with a 2d api, for example you dont get hardware support for alpha, and you spend a lot more time getting good graphics with a 2d game. You can make them just as good or better compared to 3d but it takes so much time to get all the animations done. For example say you have 1 unit, he has 3 states: walk, run, standing, in 8 directions. All of this done with 1 armor type and 1 weapon. thats a lot of graphics just right here, now consider you can have 5 weapon types, sword, dbl handed sword, bow, cross bow, staff. You have to make new animations for those weapons, and again with 1 armor type. This can take a very long time. With 3d, its very easy and you can have different types of armor for each area of the character, leg armor could be different from the helm. with not just different weapons that look alike, 1 model for 40 different types of swords but you can model and tex and have special effects for that weapon and its done. You can even do all of that by making it a 2d game with 2d graphics and such. just used well made 3d models, that dont have a 3d look to it. Also 3d is where its at, I know pocket pc can only use 2d, for now. But in 2 years that will be different. It isnt very hard to make a 2d iso game for those I would think, But your forcing yourself to be behind, in a way. Learn 2d and 3d. You will make better game..

eh 2D, 3D

in all reality it''s all the same to me, i will be doing both.

i shall attack the competion on all side, lay waste to thier fortresses, grind thier bones to make me bread... er wait um... sorry kinda got lost for a second=)

at the moment though 2D is what i do,

you raise alot of good points though, graphics production is hell at best not to mention the limitation of how many graphics u need to have lots of differnt wear, of cource you can implement overlay systems but making graphics for those are a pain too, when it comes to dynamic graphics usage 3D is king=)




Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com



Voice your discontent! help stop the flames!

quote:Original post by Dalik
The one advantage I have with 3d over 2d is the speed and graphic detail.

*snip*

You cant really get good performance with a 2d api, for example you dont get hardware support for alpha, and you spend a lot more time getting good graphics with a 2d game.

The only problem I have with what you said is that you assume you have to use a 2D API to make a 2D game. Not true. You can just as easily make use of the 3D accelerated hardware to do 2D graphics, and get the benefits of depth buffering, alpha blending, smooth shading, etc... After all, no matter how 3D a game is, in the end it is drawn to the screen as 2D fragments of pixels, and that is what the hardware renderer works with. In fact, I highly recommend that anyone who is making a 2D game make use of the 3D hardware features, as it makes such things as smooth lighting, fog-of-war, etc... so much easier to implement.

You can also have more detailed characters with 2D, especially on older hardware where polygon counts are a serious limitation. You can create your models with 1.4 million polygons per model, if you wish, and it still renders down to the same 256x256 (or whatever) size bitmap that one of equal size but comprised of only 14 polygons will render to, and both will draw at exactly the same speed. Not true of a true 3D model composed of 1.4 million polygons vs. one made of 14 polygons.

But I do agree that creating a component-based animation system such as you describe is significantly easier with true 3D. And I also agree that art and animation generation is more tedious and time-consuming in 2D, even without the complexity of building a component-based system.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem: Lands of Shadow, an isometrically rendered hack-and-slash inspired equally by Nethack and Diablo.

What would be cool is if we could con someone into making a software based 3D library designed to animate and render 3D models onto a 2D surface.