Greetings Everyone,
It's been a while since I started a topic here,
(kinda sad to see this forum so stale)
So I decided that I would start a discussion, mainly concerned with advanced features in an isometric landscape, in an attempt to make our game better.
So your oppinions and ideas for better or different systems is what I would like :-)
here are some screen captures that illustrate some features of the engine and what some of our environments look like, please give feedback on how we can improve these, aswell.
(please only give feedback on techniques or graphical quality, not as to what the things really are e.g. dont say (what is with the glowing things?) )
The bare bones:
So let us assume that we have a basic system set-up, an isometric map, 2:1 aspect ratio (more specifically 64x32 tiles and in a diamond arrangement).
And on this map, tiles can be marked as blocked, and objects of any x/y cell size can be placed as well, with the object tagging the underlying tiles as blocked.
So now, we have our character standing in this map, filled with walls and columns and objects and etc.
Other fixed constants are...
Alpha blending on tiles or objects may be done, in the 8 bit range
All images used have an in-image per-pixel alpha channel of 8 bits
Color modulation may be performed on an image using a 24 bit color, so that, when the color is white (255,255,255) the image is unchanged, and when the color is black (0,0,0) the image is black
Image Rotation is not possible
Map Rotation or Zoom is not possible
Camera Movement:
Currently we use a non-linear camera tracking system, with this system you can assign some object on the map as it's target.
The camera then closes distance on the object, at a speed relative to it's distance from the object, thus, if the camera is sent somewhere far away, it will speed over there quickly until it closes distance and then will smoothly slow down, this gives the camera a 'disconnected' feeling from the character.
This movement feature is used alot to alert the player of interest, for instance, if you throw a switch that opens a door far away, the camera will zoom off to show the door was opened, we feel this gives a good cinematic quality to the game.
Any comments on this?
Lighting:
Lighting is computed in a world-to-light fasion, almost like ray-tracing,
for each tile in the view, it checks if each light in the view is within range to effect it, for each light that does, the color which acts as both color and intensity (as explained with modulation above) are added together with the global light color (ambient light), when doing this addition though, only light values that are brighter than the ambient light are used, thus, if the ambient light was 255,255,255 (which means no darkness) then no lights would show up.
Is this the right way to compute light interaction?
shadowing:
as light values are computed, line-of-sight is tested on the tile-to-light, if somthing is in the way, the light will not cast on the tile, this allows light to be contained within rooms
any thoughts on that?
Occlusion:
if the main character walks behind an object the objects that are then occluding are made semi-transparent, to allow the player to see the main character.
Do you think having the obstruction fade smoothly, rather than all at once, would help the 'texture' of the game?
that is really all I have for questions at the moment, i will post more if i think of them.
