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Movement between inside and outside doesn't ruin combat, IMO. It just means a house or building is not a combat area, unless you are inside the house, such as the Baldur's Gate series.
I think Baldur's Gate is a good example of how to do interiors.
Conversely, you can do like Baldur's Gate and add a ton of unique encounters and gameplay opportunities inside the buildings. I don't think that would have been possible without loading screens as the city of Baldur's Gate is huge.
Conversely, you can do like Baldur's Gate and add a ton of unique encounters and gameplay opportunities inside the buildings. I don't think that would have been possible without loading screens as the city of Baldur's Gate is huge.
It was the way they did maps as well. They painted the maps which created huuuuge files.
I didn't mind the interior of buildings being separate zones in Baldur's Gate. When I entered a building it made me feel like I was in a different world, where outside sounds if you could hear them at all were muffled. I was disappointed in BG generally, but that was a memorable effect. Of course it worked in BG, because their artists were so damned good.
Conversely, you can do like Baldur's Gate and add a ton of unique encounters and gameplay opportunities inside the buildings. I don't think that would have been possible without loading screens as the city of Baldur's Gate is huge.
It was the way they did maps as well. They painted the maps which created huuuuge files.
I didn't mind the interior of buildings being separate zones in Baldur's Gate. When I entered a building it made me feel like I was in a different world, where outside sounds if you could hear them at all were muffled. I was disappointed in BG generally, but that was a memorable effect. Of course it worked in BG, because their artists were so damned good.
I dunno which idiot I'm ignoring you're talking to (I assume it's a fucking retard), but BG is p. subpar looking back now. But I agree, at the time it was awesome. I've said that the IE games, especially BG series, were the best produced RPGs ever.
Playing around with multi-tiles I am now facing two tough questions. Interiors, do I show them as a separate screen or as a new screen?
And how to manage multiple tiles to create larger structures, cliffs, houses, etc. http://imgur.com/a/97lV4 (link, still don't know how to insert pictures).
As you can see this is quite tricky so I am introducing a prefab builder where chunks can be assembled and placed down as a single unit.
Interiors should be part of the map like they were in Fallout. There should be continuity of movement between inside and outside, otherwise you ruin combat. Houses should not be big objects, but made of multiple tiles (walls, floors, etc)
Multi-tile-single-bitmap objects, as I said before, are a sorting algorithm issue. As it's not vital to gameplay, and some projects seem to avoid them entirely, you may want to avoid them for now.
I would also suggest not bothering with true multiple floors.
Just a random thought as I was watching a Matt Chat video....grass, nay, terrain tiles are some of the hardest things to get right. Because if done wrong, you tend to get a really shitty tiling effect. This goes for any tiled game, whether or not it's isometric.
For example, something like this is not seamless because the tiles are very obvious:
So what's the solution? Well, basically there's two. One gives you a more uniform look and takes a bit more effort to do. The other , IMO, gives you a less consistent look but can be just as seamless as the first with a bit less effort.
1. Seamless tiles. These are tiles that when put together do not give a grid like effect unless you look extremely close. This is done by the fact that the different parts of the tile complete each other. What I mean is that the upper left hand of the tile might complete the bottom right hand of the tile, etc. So when you put them together it all fits together seamlessly. It definitely takes more effort, but like I said the tiling effect is minimized if not completely gone.
2. Multiple tiles for one texture. This is basically the creation of multiple tiles for one texture. The multiple textures help break up the tiled look, and can even appear a bit more realistic than the seamless tiled look. That's because real life grass or any other texture tends to have patches, discoloration and other variety to it. A lot of tiled games used this approach for some of its textures. For practical purposes you mainly do this for areas that will be used in the game a lot.
Fallout 1 (see the sand area.)
HoMM3 (the grass in the world map is something like 10+ different grass textures).
And here's a more practical illustration. Forgive the crappy grid as I used MS Paint at work. But basically the grass is made up of half a dozen or so tiles. I've outlined two different sets in red and blue. However, also keep in mind that it also uses seamless tiles for the dirt areas. It's just one tile repeated over and over again.
Even that MMO you linked to also uses this approach. Also, if you look closely at the grass you'll find something interesting: It's basically using a photograph of grass as the texture. There's no post-production, it's not rendered in 3D, and it's not drawn/painted in 2D. They basically just took a picture of grass, cut it up, resized it to look appropriate, and made tiles. But it works because of the particular texture and color, etc. So they probably used something like this. Pretty cool huh?
Just a random thought as I was watching a Matt Chat video....grass, nay, terrain tiles are some of the hardest things to get right. Because if done wrong, you tend to get a really shitty tiling effect. This goes for any tiled game, whether or not it's isometric.
For example, something like this is not seamless because the tiles are very obvious:
So what's the solution? Well, basically there's two. One gives you a more uniform look and takes a bit more effort to do. The other , IMO, gives you a less consistent look but can be just as seamless as the first with a bit less effort.
1. Seamless tiles. These are tiles that when put together do not give a grid like effect unless you look extremely close. This is done by the fact that the different parts of the tile complete each other. What I mean is that the upper left hand of the tile might complete the bottom right hand of the tile, etc. So when you put them together it all fits together seamlessly. It definitely takes more effort, but like I said the tiling effect is minimized if not completely gone.
2. Multiple tiles for one texture. This is basically the creation of multiple tiles for one texture. The multiple textures help break up the tiled look, and can even appear a bit more realistic than the seamless tiled look. That's because real life grass or any other texture tends to have patches, discoloration and other variety to it. A lot of tiled games used this approach for some of its textures. For practical purposes you mainly do this for areas that will be used in the game a lot.
Fallout 1 (see the sand area.)
HoMM3 (the grass in the world map is something like 10+ different grass textures).
And here's a more practical illustration. Forgive the crappy grid as I used MS Paint at work. But basically the grass is made up of half a dozen or so tiles. I've outlined two different sets in red and blue. However, also keep in mind that it also uses seamless tiles for the dirt areas. It's just one tile repeated over and over again.
Even that MMO you linked to also uses this approach. Also, if you look closely at the grass you'll find something interesting: It's basically using a photograph of grass as the texture. There's no post-production, it's not rendered in 3D, and it's not drawn/painted in 2D. They basically just took a picture of grass, cut it up, resized it to look appropriate, and made tiles. But it works because of the particular texture and color, etc. So they probably used something like this. Pretty cool huh?
So it looks like he made some school boy errors - probably my fault, I didn't explain enough. Artists tend to do this a lot with isometric tiles.
The main problems are that the tiling isn't laid out properly (or created in modular fashion) and the grass isn't seemless. So I think he gets whats wrong now and will try again.
In this approach the tiles are still seamless, arent's they? The difference is that such tiles need to seamlessly blend not only with themselves, but with all the variants.
Here's a good article discussing a certain solution to this problem.
Hmm, you might be right. Not sure about the Furcadia example I gave, but HoMM3 had something like 16 tiles for grass on the map. That's a good link, thanks.
While isometric looks great, I can see why the industry went full 3D. It's so easy and convenient! Isometric assets production pipeline is hell. From coding perspective it's alright, just a little tricky to handle the right drawing order, but no biggie. You'll have to use your high school math to rotate projectiles correctly, and you'll also need to make a decision about the 2:1 ratio because players don't understand why they move faster horizontally than vertically, no matter how many times you explain it. But yeah, assets are a pain, probably involving both 3D work and 2D work, because pixel art is terribly expensive. I recommend not wasting one minute and using placeholders/free art during development, you can later on see how promising is the project and if it's worth spending your savings on making it look better. Maybe you can attract artists during development if you're creating something worthwile.
While isometric looks great, I can see why the industry went full 3D. It's so easy and convenient! Isometric assets production pipeline is hell. From coding perspective it's alright, just a little tricky to handle the right drawing order, but no biggie. You'll have to use your high school math to rotate projectiles correctly, and you'll also need to make a decision about the 2:1 ratio because players don't understand why they move faster horizontally than vertically, no matter how many times you explain it. But yeah, assets are a pain, probably involving both 3D work and 2D work, because pixel art is terribly expensive.
3D engines were hella expensive in the early days and there were engine makers failing, more so now than ever. I couldn't understand at the time why the entire industry just had to go 3D, as the 3D games looked ugly, the number of artists working on games went exponential and yet the games compared to the 1990s were dumbed down. So I didn't believe them then and I still don't believe them now.
BTW If you look at the recent news thread on Leonard Boyasksi, he said the team working on Arcanum was tiny. And looks to me that it was using a 3D engine that killed Troika off.
I recommend not wasting one minute and using placeholders/free art during development, you can later on see how promising is the project and if it's worth spending your savings on making it look better.
Agree. And if I was going to spend money on art, I would find games I really liked the look of and track down the artist responsible. I wouldn't waste a cent on a $5 an hour artist.
In the past I found writers and programmers will join teams and work for a share (not that they did any work anyway), but I almost never encountered any artists that would. And notice there are next to no artists showing their work here.
No, artists are a pain to deal with. By nature they are self absorbed and impractical and would never be interested in making some kind of "game" without filthy lucre in exchange so that they can fund their true "art".
Its ok though, I will just pay them until I run out of money or I have a working tileset.
As you see with the tileset, you get some of the best results from using multiple tiles to render the ground, for example. So even with tiles you still can get a very organic look.
My tileset is going very slowly. I have 10 tiles. My last artist just couldn't grasp the concept and nothing fit together so I am trying another artist. Meh, lots of experimenting I guess.
My tileset is going very slowly. I have 10 tiles. My last artist just couldn't grasp the concept and nothing fit together so I am trying another artist.
it's about 80 tiles (not all included in picture), except plants that were downloaded from web for quick testing purpose
hand painted test (from what I see max 1h/tile)
You can use layers of tiles and instead 100 tiles you can render 20 basic grass tiles and 20 additional elements. On the other hand small elements looks better when they are part of tile so probably not the best solution for realistic tilesets with smooth shadows. If you want to use png files with alpha channel it might look nice. The same with walls, you can make basic set and then decals with scratches, stains, cracks like wallpapers and goo in Fallout.
I know nothing about 2d isometric engines, but I'm glad to see the Diablo 2 engine mentioned here.
That 5-year golden age for 2d isometrics, from say '97 to '02, of all the engines that were used, Diablo 2 ended up aging the best, in my opinion.
Even better than the IE games. There are hi-res patches for nearly all those classic games, and Diablo 2 cranked up to a modern resolution is just stunning.
Repeating I know nothing about 2d engines, I'm assuming the approach used by Blizzard here is far harder to reproduce than even the IE games?
It's the animations. Everything seems animated, and there are so many frames to each one. It's like comparing the Fleischer cartoons to Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Both great, but the animation in the Fleischer cartoons is something else.
Must be so hard to do. IE has been hacked to pieces, and nobody has ever made much of the engine from Diablo 2, to my knowledge.
Is it legit?
