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Isometric Projection in Game Development

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Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#61

Post by DrScientist »

dgb23 wrote: post #49
binary132 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it would be neat if there was a place online people could hoard, archive, and share their link troves. I know I’d be interested in that. A lot of this type of content becomes unmaintained and rots badly.

I like the idea of collaborative curation of quality web sources. I think it's a fundamentally hard problem, but my hunch is that many people do this anyway in some form or another.

You could argue that the web is exactly that - each page curates links to other pages - that's why pagerank worked so well in the early days for search.

The problem is keeping the SEO bots out.

So the challenge becomes how to scale a collaborative platform while keeping out the bad actors.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#62

Post by cmiller1 »

kragen wrote: post #52
kookamamie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been widely used since the 80s or 90s - just kind of a clean way of doing it, as the other choices are not as pleasing, visually. Although, e.g. Ultima Online went with 1:1 military perspective, which looks pretty skewed in some ways.

since 01981 i think > The use of isometric graphics in video games began with Data East's DECO Cassette System arcade game Treasure Island,[6] released in Japan in September 1981,[7] but it was not released internationally until June 1982.[8] The first isometric game to be released internationally was Sega's Zaxxon, which was significantly more popular and influential;[9][10] it was released in Japan in December 1981…

Somewhere in storage I have a Colecovision and a copy of Zaxxon for it. The graphics in that game feel absolutely mind blowing for the era.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#63

Post by Lewton »

qingcharles wrote: post #2

I developed the isometric engine for this[0] video game in the 90s. I remember trying to figure out the algorithm to determine where the cursor was (converting screen x/y to position on tile, taking into account height of tile stack and the fact the tiles could be transparent) was a monstrous headache for some reason. The sort of thing you'd solve in 30 seconds with Google in 2024. The 2D tiles were rendered out of 3…

Oh man, I completely forgot about that game.

Absolutely loved it as a teen!

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#64

Post by twelvechairs »

kragen wrote: post #51
twelvechairs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a relatively recent convention though. Isometric means "equal measurement". The measurement along each axis has nothing necissarily to do with angles. The only difference is if you "stack" tiles vertically they slightly offset in 2d space from ones that are offset 1x+1y.

i would say calling this projection isometric is 'a relatively recent error' in an isometric projection all the edges of an axis-aligned cube are the same length. in the axonometric projection discussed here, which is dimetric rather than isometric, the vertical edges are of length 1 while the horizontal edges are of length √(1 + ½²) ≈ 1.118 is the fact that this projection is not isometric the reason zaxxon was call…

The horizontal edges are clearly measurable. The vertical (z) axis you are making a requirement that it has to show directly on top of a tile 1X and 1Y offset. That's on you.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#65

Post by kragen »

twelvechairs wrote: post #64
kragen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would say calling this projection isometric is 'a relatively recent error' in an isometric projection all the edges of an axis-aligned cube are the same length. in the axonometric projection discussed here, which is dimetric rather than isometric, the vertical edges are of length 1 while the horizontal edges are of length √(1 + ½²) ≈ 1.118 is the fact that this projection is not isometric the reason zaxxon was call…

The horizontal edges are clearly measurable. The vertical (z) axis you are making a requirement that it has to show directly on top of a tile 1X and 1Y offset. That's on you.

?

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#67

Post by 255kb »

redbell wrote: post #55

Let me express my deep nostalgic feeling seeing Donkey Kong Country from 1994 being mentioned! I was a huge fan of this game. When I was playing this game, I was always wondering how they were able to achieve such stunning 3D visuals where almost all of the other games in the SNES console couldn't. It turned out they are pre-rendered , as per the article.

Me too. It happens that I kept my Super Nintendo and play the game with my kid regularly. We have tons of fun. I still have the booklet where they say that they prerendered the graphics on "Silicon Graphics" computer, same that were used for Terminator. I also remember as a kid saying to myself "wow, it's 3D, it's so realistic"

Booklet: https://imgur.com/a/6mUVpXm

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#68

Post by immibis »

binary132 wrote: post #48
dgb23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've become a paranoid link hoarder because of this. I'm Pretty Sure these things are true in comparison to the past: - There is much more high quality content on the web than was ever before. - The signal to noise ratio is _much_ smaller. - Search results are getting cluttered by SEO spam, some of which is straight up copying from organic social media style sites (forums, SO, reddit, Github issues etc.) It's extreme…

Maybe it would be neat if there was a place online people could hoard, archive, and share their link troves. I know I’d be interested in that. A lot of this type of content becomes unmaintained and rots badly.

Literally Reddit - the original version

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#69

Post by actuallyalys »

Ironically, any isometric game nowadays would still use the 3D graphics capabilities under the hood so in a way you’re faking 3D by faking 2D. (Although I suppose you could argue that you’re not really faking 2D since you’re just using two out of three dimensions.)
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