Isometric is definately the way to go for a good 3D look..
It may be alittle wierd at first if you used to just doing squares .. but in the end its alot more flexible in what you can achieve.. If you dont think isometric is flexible... just take a look at Rollercoaster Tycoon.
nuff said
Why bother with diamond shaped tiles?
I guess I''am at it again...
Isometric view IS NOTHING MORE than a mapping from 3D space to 2D space - Isometric tiles is an obvious, but (IMO) unnecesarrily slow way of implementing (visualising) it.
If I were to do it over, I would build a full 3D engine (and use an isometric camera) instead - the tradeoffs you make in a (any) tile engine tend to backfire (IMO). I''ll probably release my engine w/ source for you guys to play with - I''m not going to have time to finish any game based on it anyway - THEN you can really flame me with mails about "bad design choices" and "sloppy code". Untill then its an "eyecandy-war" and screenshots are our only weapon (And if I''m not mistaken, square is currently ahead with 2 frags to 1 against iso
).
/Niels
Isometric view IS NOTHING MORE than a mapping from 3D space to 2D space - Isometric tiles is an obvious, but (IMO) unnecesarrily slow way of implementing (visualising) it.
If I were to do it over, I would build a full 3D engine (and use an isometric camera) instead - the tradeoffs you make in a (any) tile engine tend to backfire (IMO). I''ll probably release my engine w/ source for you guys to play with - I''m not going to have time to finish any game based on it anyway - THEN you can really flame me with mails about "bad design choices" and "sloppy code". Untill then its an "eyecandy-war" and screenshots are our only weapon (And if I''m not mistaken, square is currently ahead with 2 frags to 1 against iso
)./Niels
Ok, Niels, I took a look at your screenshots, and they look great. They also look nothing like my current project is intended to look.
I''m currently working on a turn based, small units tactics simulator in the same vein as X-Com or Chaos gate.
Now that we''ve started settling on level design any performance hit we''ve taken for using iso is weighed out by the following considerations:
1. We *want* the old school look and feel of the iso games such as X-com. eg. Thin destructable walls; Corridors *exactly* one unit wide. Destructible floors/ceilings. With square tiles its a pain to blow away a section of floor and have it stop at the wall.
2. We estimate that our tile sets would have to be about twice as large if we used a square tiling system.
3. Multiple layers. Ever played X-Com Apocalypse in the hydroponics farm map? 8 separate height levels all with monsters to suck out your brains ready to leap down from above. The square tile system just didn''t work when we tried this, unless we implemented tweaks that caused performance to drop *way* below what we were getting on iso.
4. 90 degree map rotation and angle tilts. Our iso tiles made map rotation a breeze. Our square tile attempts were a nightmare. The tile set changes for our angle tilts on square tiles were a nightmare and a half.
In conclusion: Stop blasting iso for *all* applications, unless and until you can show me how I can do *all* these things in square tiles at the same performance cost (computational and storage) as iso tiles.
I''m currently working on a turn based, small units tactics simulator in the same vein as X-Com or Chaos gate.
Now that we''ve started settling on level design any performance hit we''ve taken for using iso is weighed out by the following considerations:
1. We *want* the old school look and feel of the iso games such as X-com. eg. Thin destructable walls; Corridors *exactly* one unit wide. Destructible floors/ceilings. With square tiles its a pain to blow away a section of floor and have it stop at the wall.
2. We estimate that our tile sets would have to be about twice as large if we used a square tiling system.
3. Multiple layers. Ever played X-Com Apocalypse in the hydroponics farm map? 8 separate height levels all with monsters to suck out your brains ready to leap down from above. The square tile system just didn''t work when we tried this, unless we implemented tweaks that caused performance to drop *way* below what we were getting on iso.
4. 90 degree map rotation and angle tilts. Our iso tiles made map rotation a breeze. Our square tile attempts were a nightmare. The tile set changes for our angle tilts on square tiles were a nightmare and a half.
In conclusion: Stop blasting iso for *all* applications, unless and until you can show me how I can do *all* these things in square tiles at the same performance cost (computational and storage) as iso tiles.
2 things:
1) Granted, layers are a bitch to implement in square tiles. Doable, but a bitch.
2) I prefer not to have destructible walls as part of the tileset anyhow. I keep walls like this in the same layer as units, items etc.
Which is probably a thing I have neglected to explain in previous posts: My tiles are exclusively "filling" for the background - it takes up the majority of the 640x480 pixels I need to draw, and because of this I can waste a few more cycles on the rest of the graphics, doing e.g. alpha blending.
/Niels
1) Granted, layers are a bitch to implement in square tiles. Doable, but a bitch.
2) I prefer not to have destructible walls as part of the tileset anyhow. I keep walls like this in the same layer as units, items etc.
Which is probably a thing I have neglected to explain in previous posts: My tiles are exclusively "filling" for the background - it takes up the majority of the 640x480 pixels I need to draw, and because of this I can waste a few more cycles on the rest of the graphics, doing e.g. alpha blending.
/Niels
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