Hi I am currently programming an isometric RTS in D3D8. I''m wondering how many directions and frames I should take for my units ? 12 or 16 directions ? 6,8,10 or 12 frames ??? Thx 4 help :-)

I say you do 16. Starcraft uses 16 directions and it''s one of the greatest games of all-time. Aoe2 uses only 8 but it needed the speed because of the detailed graphics that weighted it down.

Newbie to game programming?
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KaBooMgames
Great for Newbs, Masters welcome as well

OK, I agree to 16 directions ....
butnot to starcraft .... it''s crap :-)

I''m not a newbie, just a newbie to isometric
programming :-)
Thx 4 help !!!

We take 32 pictures in Hostile Encounter (www.hostileencounter.com)
for air units and 8 pictures/frames for ground units (but we should have used 16 for ground) Ground units have lots of walk animations and its just too much data

Besides Starcraft has the BEST RTS engine EVER... until HE will be out i mean... hehe

Please do not make such simple considerations like "Starcraft is crap" until you have not done better.

We have allmost done better with HE, but still StarCraft''s engine is on top at some issues ... dont take it very easy, if you can do better you will be rich... it has:
-isometric overlaped editable terrain engine
-true shadows
-true line of sight
-fantastic FOW (real alpha blending with blur)
-many units on screen with no speed loss (200 units on screen)
-all units can cloack with predator like GFX
-network capable to deal with 1600ms or more latency using 8 players peer 2 peer
-incredible FPS''s (get a replay and play it at 16x speed )
-best pathfinding (after HE )
-3 real diffrent balanced races (super game design)
-best Computer AI yet (starting from zero against humman)

after all a very good and dynamic RTS engine...noone has succede to make a better one yet....

Star craft just use 8 direction cause it is not a isometric engine, red alert 2 use 32 direction with 5 inclination angles,
i have made a games with 160 diferent units with 8 direction, 7 animation frames and 6 diferent animation categories... so the memory is not a problem.

That''s Right !!! StarCraft Rulez !!! It uses 16 directions, but it divedes them up in 16 moore, so totally 32 directtions ! The remaining 16 are horizontal flips of the original 16 stored in bitmaps !

"Find the path, follow the Master... Follow the master, understand the master... Be the master !"