Old school Isometric RPG hardship

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Indeed it is tricky. I've implemented variable height terrain in my engine, but it still needs work on grid display and tile picking, and it's hardly essential. If in doubt don't do it.

The more I think about it the more I'm thinking about leaving out slopes. I will have elevations and cliffs however. These will essentially be the same as tall buildings with stacked up tiles.
Or maybe "Fake elevations" https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12771.

 

[YanBG]

Nice work you are doing!

How did you solve the empty space between wall and roof, triangles?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Nice work you are doing!

How did you solve the empty space between wall and roof, triangles?

I assume you refer to this?

This is not so hard. But I have a secret weapon that I use

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

How in hell do I make a modular isometric roof - looking somewhat good? I'm really not sure. Ok so I could cop out and do flat roofs but if I want a proper slanty roof I'm not sure how to make that modular.

This one is just one big roof tile that disappears when character enters a building, triangle wooden element in the front is part of a tile:

This (unfinished) one is made out of tiles:

You need a specific angle of slope or else edge won't tile. You need about 15 tiles for one direction of the roof (N-S or E-W). For both directions and transitions probably about 35 tiles, (let's say $5 each, slate patterns are time-consuming). For the simplest flat roof, you need 9 tiles.

Which one is better option depends on your game. If it's small game with limited number of buildings, and you don't mind many buildings in the same size and shape, using one big roof graphic could be cheaper/faster, if game is big and you want a lot of buildings in different sizes and shapes, separate tiles are better.

It would have to be non-modular, and serve as a giant prop on top of the house that fades out when you enter it. Though I haven't experimented with this idea.

Fonline does it, but it needs normal small tiles underneath big roof graphic.

Do you by any chance do old school UI's?

 

[YanBG]

Oh wait, it's one solid piece? What if you have wider houses? I wonder how to make it modular.

Also what is the angle of your roof, 30 degrees? I see that some games use only one slope, but i like with 2. I'm working on isometric RPG as well, that's why i am interested.

Spoiler

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Oh wait, it's one solid piece? What if you have wider houses? I wonder how to make it modular.

Also what is the angle of your roof, 30 degrees? I see that some games use only one slope, but i like with 2. I'm working on isometric RPG as well, that's why i am interested.

Spoiler

I haven't made that modular yet to be honest. Or at least I have decided to make that part non-modular. I have thought about it and it makes more sense to have the roofs modular in a different way. That is not one huge slant but more about slotting junctions together. L-shapes and so on.

Also bear in mind very large slanted roofs would not have been physically possible to make with old techniques and materials. Indeed I cannot recall ever seeing a large slanted roof.

If I remember right I looked up roof slope on wikipedia and its varied but I think I settled on 30 degrees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_pitch

On a side, how do you find GameMaker studio for isometric? Every engine I looked at I only found hardship.

 

[gaussgunner]

Also bear in mind very large slanted roofs would not have been physically possible to make with old techniques and materials. Indeed I cannot recall ever seeing a large slanted roof.

How large, like 100 feet wide? There are some in America, and (mostly ruins built before deforestation) in Europe, and surely in ancient Greece and Rome. How do you think they built the Parthenon?

 

[YanBG]

On a side, how do you find GameMaker studio for isometric? Every engine I looked at I only found hardship.

I haven't used others like Unity and i haven't been coding before i started with this game few years ago. I learned everything on the run, i like GM now but i remade a lot of the mechanics few times already. Biggest problem was the lag, you can make a game bad very fast, because there are many functions you don't need and some people can give you bad advices.

But you can code a lot of stuff in GM, it uses it's own language similar to Java, there can be extensions in C++ and shaders too. People say it's better for 2d than Unity and i code the isometric on a top-down grid only draw the sprites with the offset.

Recently i added perlin noise, to make a bigger procedural open world map.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

On a side, how do you find GameMaker studio for isometric? Every engine I looked at I only found hardship.

I haven't used others like Unity and i haven't been coding before i started with this game few years ago. I learned everything on the run, i like GM now but i remade a lot of the mechanics few times already. Biggest problem was the lag, you can make a game bad very fast, because there are many functions you don't need and some people can give you bad advices.

But you can code a lot of stuff in GM, it uses it's own language similar to Java, there can be extensions in C++ and shaders too. People say it's better for 2d than Unity and i code the isometric on a top-down grid only draw the sprites with the offset.

Recently i added perlin noise, to make a bigger procedural open world map.

Yes, I agree with those people and will never use Unity again as their customer support is so bad. The asset store is practically a scam. The Unity forum staff have a bad attitude and whats worse the engine is shit.
After endless frustration with almost everything in Unity I switched to monogame and I am very pleased that I did. Its not perfect and still has a lot to do to be isometric ready but its promising so far.

 

[supervoid]

Do you by any chance do old school UI's?

Old shool like in Fallout or IE games? Yes.

Its not perfect and still has a lot to do to be isometric ready

Godot has isometric mode with light, shaders and stuff, no idea if it's any good as Unity replacement.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Typically, how much might such a UI cost to develop?

 

[supervoid]

Typically, how much might such a UI cost to develop?

It depends on scope/style/complexity. Multiple thousands if you want something high quality. Maybe under $500 if it's something very simple. UX and UI design is more expensive than UI art so if you want to save money try to come up with layout yourself and then commission specific sizes and shapes of graphics.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I've been slaving away making more art. I also have a new UI artist and the UI is looking old school and very promising.

At this rate with fair wind and some luck it may only be 6-7 more years before I reach a working beta.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Adding some more detail and a building. Its looking unlikely that I can have roof cutaways, even though I would like to I cannot justify the rather large amount of extra artistic effort.
Not to mention lots of extra work on the engine to support it.
On the plus side the houses will look nicer as I can do things like add shadows and more detail.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Oh wait, it's one solid piece? What if you have wider houses? I wonder how to make it modular.

Also what is the angle of your roof, 30 degrees? I see that some games use only one slope, but i like with 2. I'm working on isometric RPG as well, that's why i am interested.

Spoiler

As you can see from the last picture I also have triangles projected to isometric that I can use for modularity. I have also updated the roof angle so its now at a 45 degrees.

 

[YanBG]

Looks awesome! I think 45d is better, it saves the work on opposite tiles, also i like the pieces you have now.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Looks awesome! I think 45d is better, it saves the work on opposite tiles, also i like the pieces you have now.

Yes the slope angle is technically not as realistic but it certainly saves time and agony. Last weekend over a few beers very late at light I was doing a lot of thinking and arrived at the conclusion that compromises must be made to move forward.
The whole idea had exploded with complexity so now I am taking some time to reign it all in. Ultimately there are five things to me that really really matter to an RPG and everything else can be given some slack.
Sometimes its best not to be pressing an artist for 110% if they can get 70-80% of what I need go with it.

 

[gaussgunner]

Looks awesome! I think 45d is better, it saves the work on opposite tiles, also i like the pieces you have now.

Yeah, and the opposite tiles don't look good anyway.

I think a ~30d camera angle and roof angle looks better. I did some experimenting in 3D. But that adds a few complications, and you can't keep changing that stuff when you're using 2D art. 45d is a totally acceptable compromise.

 

[YanBG]

How is it going with the game? You could use some placeholder art and work on the battle system etc. Have you thought about mobile release?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

How is it going with the game? You could use some placeholder art and work on the battle system etc. Have you thought about mobile release?

Its going OK. I finished the auto navmesh generation:-

I would actually love to focus 100% on art but I need to finish the engine, the library I am using is based off monogame and is crawling with bugs.
Over xmas I stripped out the isometric render sorting to make it work. Thats the problem with opensource libraries they tend to never be finished. Mostly I am bug fixing and doing the new UI.

I hired an artist to make a UI but I was a little disappointed with the result. It seems everyone nowadays can only do cutesy art and most just want to do a smash and grab with your money. Its a shame cause if he cared a bit more I would have invested more money in in him and we maybe could get things right! I'm really not sure what to do about the UI. Finding the right artist with the right skills and an appropriate attitude and mature outlook is hard.

As far as mobile is concerned back in 1996 we never had mobile phone that could draw graphics, but this game should run on a pentium.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Some examples of what I mean by cutesy. This is work I've paid for. I'm not disrespecting these guys but I'm left feeling frustrated and I want to improve the situation.
Maybe the problem is me and I can't communicate and sending pictures of baldurs gate, diablo is not sufficient explanation?

Ok so I guess I could have stuck it out but we worked together for months sometimes and I didn't want to throw away good money after bad.
I do view artists portfolios before giving work but they never seem to translate their good stuff into my stuff.
What part of old-school do artists not get? Everything is this habbo cutesy stuff its really the dominant style that artists can/want to make now.

 

[supervoid]

What part of old-school do artists not get? Everything is this habbo cutesy stuff its really the dominant style that artists can/want to make now.

Anybody with basic skill can and will do old school style art. You keep hiring amateurs.
Those wall tiles on the top are scam quality.
UI is acceptable low budget quality but looks like retextured mobile interface.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

What part of old-school do artists not get? Everything is this habbo cutesy stuff its really the dominant style that artists can/want to make now.

Anybody with basic skill can and will do old school style art. You keep hiring amateurs.
Those wall tiles on the top are scam quality.
UI is acceptable low budget quality but looks like retextured mobile interface.

Well yes its clearly amateurish (I havent posted some other work which is worse) although I believed that its not too much to ask an amateur to deliver some mediocre results. Its difficult to connect with the right people by placing an advert on deviantart or pixelation or x website. Unity site is the worst and just out and out scammers. Again, not looking for art genii here just mediocre artists that can make art with an old-school vibe, surely thats quite reasonable?

 

[YanBG]

I've worked as modeler and it's difficult to guess what the manager wants, i mean sometimes they don't know either but i had the "feel" from the game(have played it, read a lot of community forums etc). There were older/original graphics and sometimes is even harder to try and match that stuff(made in late 90s). But i don't have much experience with pure 2d.

On a dev note, how do you import the characters, are the frames in big spritesheets or some other system of separate animations/angles?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

On a dev note, how do you import the characters, are the frames in big spritesheets or some other system of separate animations/angles?

Just a big sprite sheet. Although I may split up the characters into body parts so that I can replace clothing, weapons, etc.