If you're curious we're doing an RPG as well, and it is also 3rd person isometric. However we thought that the combo 3d ground and 2d objects would offer the best of both worlds: contoured terrian, effects, etc. but a high detail level retained in our objects.
3D and Iso Mix: Good or Bad
Full 3d seems to be becoming more popular these days however I still think, imho, that it lacks the rich detail 2d provides. Example being take something like Darkstone, generally thought to be a good game and also touting full 3d, and compare it to the coming Diablo 2. D2 has basically a 2d engine but despite that the screen shots look fantastic. With technology moving this will not always be the case but for now I think 2d provides the ability to do more "rich" looking graphics as opposed to that washed out look you sometimes get in even excellent 3d games.
the reason i'm using full 3d to make an iso engine is because it's much easier than writing a tile engine. i had so many redraw problems in my old tile engine that i just gave up. with the new 3d engine, it's much easier to do stuff and i got a basic one running in far less time than the old one. but you are right, the graphics quality is way lower
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http://members.xoom.com/mutex0
3D is easier ? uh ! I wrote my first iso-engine within 3 days and it's quite simple IMO. Creating a nice 3d-engine is much more work, especially if you want a fast engine.
CU
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Skullpture Entertainment
#40842461
__How about a hybrid engine? You could have floor, wall, and static objects pre-rendered into tiles and real-time render all the characters and objects that rotate. It's been done before, in many styles, and it saves a lot of rendering time and disk space.
yeah, creating a _nice_ 3d engine is really hard. what made my old tile engine hard was that it was isometric, and what i did was just update parts that changed on the screen. that led to really strange clipping problems such as heads popping off, nuke suddenly appearing (i was using civ2 graphics). 3d is much more straightforward, i can imagine a 3d world in my mind. but with the isometric stuff and strange coordinate system, that was impossible. it probably would've been a lot easier if it was just square tiles
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http://members.xoom.com/mutex0
Yes creating a 3d engine for an isometric game from scratch would be difficult. I suggesting using an existing engine, for instance Retained Mode which comes with the Direct X. You could create an Iso engine using RM in about 3 days, i'm sure and it would be fully funtional 3d. If your inclined toward this path and need any help just drop me some mail, I've worked with RM for a while and might be able to help.
-ddn
Author
OK I gather that this is not a ground shattering, or completely original idea. But was is the general concensus on mixing 3D with Iso. And I don't just mean heightmaps, like UO- but true 3D where the camera can move around the players...
I'm working on an online RPG that uses this approach and I'd just wanted to find out peoples opinions on it...
We use a mix, so the buildings are blitted and simply 2D and the terrain ist real 3d with special fx and anything you need. It hasn't been much work yet, but the next step will be adding the feature, that only those things which have changed will be repainted, and, yes, that's much work.
CU
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Skullpture Entertainment
#40842461
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