Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Heresy: There is no reason to expect a 2D-isometric engine again. But now we do have one...

Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
Highly interactive environments? Where are they?

Well, you see in Morrowind you can loot every barrel for a dirty rag and broom handle but in Baldur's Gate some barrels are just part of the backdrop.. :roll:
 

shihonage

Subscribe to my OnlyFans
Patron
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
7,157
Location
location, location
Bubbles In Memoria
:hmmm:

You're not actually engaging with anything I posted. You're making my post out to be a strawman. The point wasn't graphics, but the capabilities of 3d. If you think having to judge structural integrity of a building and making a choice about where to best bomb that building to bring it down as efficiently as possible makes for boring gameplay, that's perfectly fine, but it is gameplay that utilizes the capabilities of 3d in a way that 2d can't.

If I didn't address your point in previous post, then I do not understand your point.

Is this now an argument about 2d vs 3d ENVIRONMENTS?

Unfortunately it's very easy to sprawl this subject from aesthetics to functionality to far beyond isometric RPGs, and in the process to constantly change the field goals. I kinda started losing track of it in my previous post already.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
The point wasn't graphics, but the capabilities of 3d. If you think having to judge structural integrity of a building and making a choice about where to best bomb that building to bring it down as efficiently as possible makes for boring gameplay, that's perfectly fine, but it is gameplay that utilizes the capabilities of 3d in a way that 2d can't.

Oh, you mean like how Dwarf Fortress has had actual structural mechanics implemented that allowed for collapsing structures by destroying foundations? Yeah I totally agree, good thing it was built in a modern 3D engine huh?


:retarded:
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
Oh, you mean like how Dwarf Fortress has had actual structural mechanics implemented that allowed for collapsing structures by destroying foundations? Yeah I totally agree, good thing it was built in a modern 3D engine huh?


:retarded:
In that case, show me a video that is the 2d equivalent of the one I posted. You can't. Like I said before (which you choose to ignore):

Sure, you can implement those things in 2d, but to nowhere near the same level of complexity as you can in a 3d game.





You are free to disagree on whether you think that complexity is valuable, but it is there.
 

Farage

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2014
Messages
596
Yeah, a 3D engine doesn't need math at all.
Oh I forgot, it solves its math on its own, whereas with an isometric engine, the player has to solve all the Math.
We found the reason for the decline. Player doesn't need to solve the Math of isometric engines any more.
I really enjoyed doing the Math, I just hated those games where you had to re-roll over and over again, to get the parameters for the engine right.
2D isometric engines sucks dick, if you wanna have a game that comes slightly close to what engines like Unity or Unreal 4 provides, you'll have to spend 2 years+ developing your own depth graphic processing logic.
Uh, but wait, why am i teaching you this? Why don't you go ahead and pick-up a 2D iso engine then? See for yourself what i've been through the last year, since you know about it so much dickface
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
In that case, show me a video that is the 2d equivalent of the one I posted.
Oh man, but such technology is so new and advanced, I'll need to find some sort of AAA 2D game from the last few years, let me think.

Oh here it is.



Oh, and you can adjust things like gravity and soil consistency in this game, and wind actually affects your shots. When was the last time wind was a factor in a 3D game?
 

Garryydde

Arcane
Patron
Douchebag! Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
825
Location
no
Oh man, but such technology is so new and advanced, I'll need to find some sort of AAA 2D game from the last few years, let me think.

Oh here it is.



Oh, and you can adjust things like gravity and soil consistency in this game, and wind actually affects your shots. When was the last time wind was a factor in a 3D game?

All I can think of recently are Assassin's Creed 4 and the EA Sports golf games.
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
Oh man, but such technology is so new and advanced, I'll need to find some sort of AAA 2D game from the last few years, let me think.

Oh here it is.
Good job on the strawman. It's obvious that wasn't remotely what I was talking about. If you think taking Pacman-shaped chunks of an abstracted 2d backdrop is comparable then I have no words. Might as well claim a P&P session is better than both 2d and 3d games because there's truly no limit there.

When was the last time wind was a factor in a 3D game?
A quick google search:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody's_Golf_4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_(video_game)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_The_Wind_Waker
 

DwarvenFood

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
6,408
Location
Atlantic Accelerator
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Brofist for Scorched Earth, spent hours on it back in the day. Even hacked the .exe and unlocked some weird laser weapons that were somehow left out of the final game.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Good job on the strawman. It's obvious that wasn't remotely what I was talking about. If you think taking Pacman-shaped chunks of an abstracted 2d backdrop is comparable then I have no words. Might as well claim a P&P session is better than both 2d and 3d because there's truly no limit there.
Feel free to post the awesome destructible environments of 3D games released in 1991.

And yeah, PnP is far better than a video game when it comes to potential complexity. How retarded can you get? You could have an actual fucking architect or demolitions engineer with proper blueprints describing how things work out.

The shit in red faction is just another lame gimmick, no better than the shitty ragdoll corpses that are everywhere now (boy those sure add to the gameplay huh?) or needlessly detailed lighting engines on top of crappy uninspired textures thrown together with no thought of what the final image will look like.
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
Feel free to post the awesome destructible environments of 3D games released in 1991.
This is nonsensical reasoning. Technology develops. We are talking about the now, not a hypothetical reality where 3d games never became popular. By the same logic, I could ask you restrict your search to 2d game from the same year Red Faction was released in (not that it would have mattered, since you didn't actually post what I asked for).

And yeah, PnP is far better than a video game when it comes to potential complexity. How retarded can you get? You could have an actual fucking architect or demolitions engineer with proper blueprints describing how things work out.
The point is abstractness. You're not actually destroying a building in that video you posted, it's abstracted. Having someone describe describe the process of demolition would be a further abstraction (in some sense). I asked for a video where a character does something similar: i.e. a 2d character inspecting and judging 2d building for what would be the most opportune spot to place bombs, and some manner of physics simulation when the bomb was detonated. You did not post that video, or even something remotely similar.

The shit in red faction is just another lame gimmick, no better than the shitty ragdoll corpses that are everywhere now (boy those sure add to the gameplay huh?)
It's not a gimmick if it has tangible effects on gameplay. It does.

or needlessly detailed lighting engines on top of crappy uninspired textures thrown together with no thought of what the final image will look like.
Everyone that has replied to me so far has consistently tried to make this about graphics. Almost as if they didn't believe in their own arguments.
 
Last edited:

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
If you're so hung up on buildings instead of dirt I can post a video of angry birds instead. It has about the same level of 'physics simulation' as red faction, where buildings keep standing indefinitely with a tiny thread supporting them because LOL ABSTRACTION.

The only reason I can't find a 2D version of red faction is because it's a stupid obscure gimmick to begin with. You might as well ask for a 2D version of fucking AI Wars, as though the 3D models are required to make that game work.

I give zero fucks about watching a character walk around a building and larping that the character himself is thinking about where to damage it to make it fall down. This has no effect on gameplay at all. It's a retarded gimmick. It's like arguing the Oblivion has a more reactive world than Nethack because all the shit you can do in Nethack (Engraving messages in floors, walls and items, freezing water, digging tunnels or pits, filling pits with boulders, dipping objects into liquids like oil or water to do things like make them slippery or diluted or rusty, etc.) is 'just an abstraction' while putting buckets on people's heads and robbing them blind is 'physics simulation'.
 

Athelas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 24, 2013
Messages
4,502
I don't recall saying Red Faction was the end all be all of gameplay. It was just an example of something that utilizes the capabilities of 3d. Angry Birds is another weird comparison you're making, the 'buildings' in that game are comprised of individual objects - again something completely different from what I'm talking about. I'm not sure why a simple statement like '3d offers a lot of flexibility that is difficult or impossible to implement in 2d' is the cause of such controversy. It is rather telling that many isometric 2d games make use of 3d elements (like character models being 3d) - gee, I wonder why?

while putting buckets on people's heads and robbing them blind is 'physics simulation'
That's more an of an issue of A.I. not being able to react to buckets being placed over their heads.

buildings keep standing indefinitely with a tiny thread supporting them because LOL ABSTRACTION
That is something that can occasionally happen - of course a game with some level of complexity is going to have slip-ups like that. But it's not really the norm.
 
Last edited:

:Flash:

Arcane
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
6,453
It is rather telling that many isometric 2d games make use of 3d elements (like character models being 3d) - gee, I wonder why?
Money and ease of asset creation process.
Larian switched from 2d models to 3d models between Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity, even though both games use the same engine for everything else. It was pretty clear these were the reasons.
What actually looked better is quite a different story:
415.jpg


7762_BeyondDivinity-Screen05_medium.jpg
 

Severian Silk

Guest
A 2D isometric engine requires a lot of math that a 3D engine would solve on its own and the 3D engines today are pretty powerful and cheap, so OP is right.
WTF are you talking about?! An isometric camera is simply a perspective camera with infinite zoom an infinite distance away. There is no extra math. Possibly even less math since you are eliminating a few variables.

That said, Scorched Earth and Angry Birds are bad examples because the number of graphics dimensions is the same as the number of dimensions in gameplay. I think that's cheating.

Lastly, there was a time when 2D games looked like ass too. I think we can expect 3D graphics to continue to improve until Moore's Law becomes an issue.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
The thing is, 3D graphics need to be modeled from multiple angles, so they're always going to require more work than 2D assets of similar quality. And we've long since passed the point where the bottleneck for graphical quality isn't the computer, but the artists. I can't draw any better now than I could 20 years ago, higher resolutions doesn't solve that. Likewise, having over 10^9000 polygons doesn't really matter if you need to spend 30 trillion dollars to finish all the high rez textures you need for all those objects.

There'll be some improvements sure, better tools and automated processess for certain things, but as someone pointed out, that tends to make everything look the same. Style requires effort and skill, not processing power.
 

Farage

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2014
Messages
596
WTF are you talking about?! An isometric camera is simply a perspective camera with infinite zoom an infinite distance away. There is no extra math. Possibly even less math since you are eliminating a few variables.
hahaha what
Do you know what z-axis depth graphic processing sorting is, fuckface? Do you people fucking google shit before saying these things? Have you ever programmed anything related to isometric?

Here, let me do it for you, you retarded autistic piece of shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2.5D

Again, simulating 3D using 2D was viable back then, because 3D engines were expensive and not very accessible, but today, they are, and they help you out with pretty much everything, from avoiding tile-based maps to solving general problems with depth-sorting that normal 2D engines would freak out when you try to create something that looks better than a pile of shit.
 
Last edited:

DwarvenFood

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
6,408
Location
Atlantic Accelerator
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
The thing is, 3D graphics need to be modeled from multiple angles, so they're always going to require more work than 2D assets of similar quality. And we've long since passed the point where the bottleneck for graphical quality isn't the computer, but the artists. I can't draw any better now than I could 20 years ago, higher resolutions doesn't solve that. Likewise, having over 10^9000 polygons doesn't really matter if you need to spend 30 trillion dollars to finish all the high rez textures you need for all those objects.

There'll be some improvements sure, better tools and automated processess for certain things, but as someone pointed out, that tends to make everything look the same. Style requires effort and skill, not processing power.
I like it how back in the 320x200 256 color period, graphics did improve over time while having the same res/color constraints - ie. the artists got better / leaned some tricks how to make stuff look prettier while still having a shitty resolution and somewhat much colors, or a better res and a couple or colours (Syndicate).

Pinball%2BWorld%2B-%2BTable%2B320x200.png

SpriteAll.gif
 

shihonage

Subscribe to my OnlyFans
Patron
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
7,157
Location
location, location
Bubbles In Memoria
Have you ever programmed anything related to isometric?

[...]

Again, simulating 3D using 2D was viable back then, because 3D engines were expensive and not very accessible, but today, they are, and they help you out with pretty much everything, from avoiding tile-based maps to solving general problems with depth-sorting that normal 2D engines would freak out when you try to create something that looks better than a pile of shit.

I will agree with the part where isometric engine isn't trivial. Depth sorting is a fucking pain in the ass.

However, the crux of your argument is that there are premade 3D engines, therefore you don't have to do it yourself.

But if there were premade isometric engines, you wouldn't have to do it yourself either.

The fact is, someone went and did those calculations for you. 3D isn't inherently easier to code than isometric, it's just others prepaved that road due to its popularity.
 

Farage

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2014
Messages
596
I will agree with the part where isometric engine isn't trivial. Depth sorting is a fucking pain in the ass.

However, the crux of your argument is that there are premade 3D engines, therefore you don't have to do it yourself.

But if there were premade isometric engines, you wouldn't have to do it yourself either.

The fact is, someone went and did those calculations for you. 3D isn't inherently easier to code than isometric, it's just others prepaved that road due to its popularity.

Yeah but, these isometric engines are slower, with less support, weaker community, lower database, and no multi-platforming at all.

You know I wrote part of that article?

Cool, am i wrong though?
 

shihonage

Subscribe to my OnlyFans
Patron
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
7,157
Location
location, location
Bubbles In Memoria
Yeah but, these isometric engines are slower, with less support, weaker community, lower database, and no multi-platforming at all.

Everything correct, except "slower". The one benefit of writing your own 2D engine is a fuckton of low-level control over CPU cycles and memory management. Using a premade engine like Unity can't even touch that. Plus of course 2D blitting is inherently faster than 3D.

But in general, again, this debate shifted from aesthetics into engine availability... yeah the 3D engines are popular, whooptee-doo.

In the end, Underrail is 2D isometric and it made it to Steam. Xenonauts seem to be doing okay, too. So these engines are viable, people still play them, and that's what matters.
 

Farage

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Feb 17, 2014
Messages
596
Totally agree with you.
But its kinda pointless to do that since theres a free software that does that (which would take something around a year or so) in 2 minutes.

I guess a good analogy would be writing a book using a typewriter.
Did it take longer? Yes.
Was it harder? Definitely.
Is it any better than a normal book? Not really.

And when it comes to aesthetics (which i talked about previously) what exactly changed?
Do you miss bad rendering on models? You can simulate that on shaders if you want to.
Do you miss sprite sheeted models? Why can't you do that exactly?
What else is missing?
Like i've said, you can simulate nostalgia using modern tools. It will not only look the same, but it will be 10x faster.


Its ironic that people still hopes for a simulation of 3D (isometric) on a 2D engine, thats just being straight-up dumb.
So i don't have to repeat myself

Oh, and i when i say "slower"/"faster" i mean development time. Not runtime speed/fps
 
Last edited:

Severian Silk

Guest
Technically, the term "isometric perspective" is only correct for some of the older games like some of SSIs where you got a perfect 30°/30° split looking down between x/y-axes and all axes have the same equal measure e.g. 1:1:1.
1298379__1.jpg

tp1.gif


But it has been used so often it has naturalized in common usage.

Ultima Online was already called that even though the z-axis was distorted:
uo5.jpg

Technically it is the typical "Militärperspektive" (I don't know if there's an english name for it, but they used to draw military plans like that in good ol' Germany)
Milit%C3%A4rperspektive.PNG


And some of the other games like Fallout and whatnot without a perfect degree split between x/y/z axes are actually axonometric, in the case of Fallout I believe cavalier oblique or other perspective types.

download.phpid1352678ley7j.png

download.phpid1352678vkbib.png


I think there was a thread on the Codex a bit back: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/just-what-is-isometric.69829/



:rage:
So much bullshit. So little reality.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom