3d iso or 2d iso?
Author
Should I make my isometric tiles 2d and just draw them to overlap, or should I use a square and rotate it to look isometric? Does it really matter?
It does matter for performance. They are faster than each other in different ways. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages.
More importantly though are two questions.
1) which would you be better at programming?
2) which do you think would look better or the way you would like it to?
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
More importantly though are two questions.
1) which would you be better at programming?
2) which do you think would look better or the way you would like it to?
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
Author
Programming wise, they are both the same to e...easy enough. Look wise I am not sure. Rotated squares into iso would take less memory and would be easier on the artists, but normal iso would look crisper(I think). What do you other people think? Which would look better. I am sort of leaning towards normal iso, becase I want a 2dish look, but I am not sure.
drawn tiles will be clearer. It is pixel to pixel images so you have complete control over the image.
rotating it will end up using the 3D API''s (or your own engines) rotating, texturing, antialiasing, mipmapping and so forth, which for small images on a screen will make it look blurry.
Look at most strategy games using full 3d engines behind them. The terrain looks a bit shoody, especially compared to the turf in games like transport tycoon or civ/ctp2.
meanwhile, 3d models would be easier with the api, but could look fuzzy or even blocky. using sprites would give you complete control over the image (again).
Advantage of a 3d API is scaling (zooming) the view, and moving it around - but then you leave the ISO scene.
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
rotating it will end up using the 3D API''s (or your own engines) rotating, texturing, antialiasing, mipmapping and so forth, which for small images on a screen will make it look blurry.
Look at most strategy games using full 3d engines behind them. The terrain looks a bit shoody, especially compared to the turf in games like transport tycoon or civ/ctp2.
meanwhile, 3d models would be easier with the api, but could look fuzzy or even blocky. using sprites would give you complete control over the image (again).
Advantage of a 3d API is scaling (zooming) the view, and moving it around - but then you leave the ISO scene.
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
oh, if you are going to stay in the ISO scene (in 30 degree iso), I would personnally use the hand drawn tile approach as it looks nice.
Since I am lazy though, I just use opengl and make it 3d.
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
Since I am lazy though, I just use opengl and make it 3d.
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
Author
Yeah, thats what im doing, openGL for all. I am doing 3d sprites because of memory limits. (each sprite pre-rendered would take like 6 megs( a lot of different animations). I will always stay in iso though. I will go with the hand drawn tiles, not rotated ones.
I just thought of this (never did it so I haven''t tried it so don''t know how fast it is)
If you are going to use hand drawn tiles through opengl, and you are planning on drawing the ground as 2d textures (glOrtho), then incase you were going to use multiple quads with the texture drawn on it, draw a single texture instead which you copy/blit the map into before hand. It may be faster, or it may not (opengl hardware texturing is pretty fast after all).
May be worth a try. I may try it myself and see which I get better results with.
Anyway, good luck with it.
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
If you are going to use hand drawn tiles through opengl, and you are planning on drawing the ground as 2d textures (glOrtho), then incase you were going to use multiple quads with the texture drawn on it, draw a single texture instead which you copy/blit the map into before hand. It may be faster, or it may not (opengl hardware texturing is pretty fast after all).
May be worth a try. I may try it myself and see which I get better results with.
Anyway, good luck with it.
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
Iso tiles aren''t just rotated they''re also skewed. In the programming link in the tutorials there''s a quick tutorial on how to turn a square texture into an iso tile.
It''s really a trade off between memory and CPU. If you don''t care about memory you can speed up the render by prerendering the tiles in ISO. If you want to save memory by keeping everything square to avoid wasted space in the graphics files, you could do the rotation and skewing in game but your render speed would drop.
Ben
[The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]
It''s really a trade off between memory and CPU. If you don''t care about memory you can speed up the render by prerendering the tiles in ISO. If you want to save memory by keeping everything square to avoid wasted space in the graphics files, you could do the rotation and skewing in game but your render speed would drop.
Ben
[The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]
no, ISO isn''t skewed.
If you use parrallel plane perspective, then it is a simple rotation.
I posted this image a while back, have a look if you get a chance
(51kb) - I won''t place it in the thread as it is a large image so would REALLY screw up the size of this page.
http://members.optushome.com.au/jlferry/image/modes.jpg
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
If you use parrallel plane perspective, then it is a simple rotation.
I posted this image a while back, have a look if you get a chance
(51kb) - I won''t place it in the thread as it is a large image so would REALLY screw up the size of this page.
http://members.optushome.com.au/jlferry/image/modes.jpg
Beer - the love catalyst
good ol'' homepage
Well if you look at something like Warcraft III, obviously they are using squares and rotating them. The thing that is evident is that even with this you can have very good graphics, and I would recommend this because it gives you more freedoms on how you want this project to look.
"If patience is a virtue, and ignorance is bliss, you can have a pretty good life if you''re stupid and willing to wait"
"If patience is a virtue, and ignorance is bliss, you can have a pretty good life if you''re stupid and willing to wait"
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