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Isometric Projection in Game Development

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Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#71

Post by ChiperSoft »

bob1029 wrote: post #45
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…

I've been prototyping an isometric browser game, and the approach I took was to draw an explicit interactive grid of divs on top of the isometric tiles with CSS affine transforms to get each to fit its respective tile surface dimensions. OnHover, et. al. follow this transform perfectly. It took me a while to get the transform figured out, but once you do you are basically done for an entire tile set. This is also rob…

Theres so many abandonware isometric games from the 90s and 00s that I’d love to see ported into browser based games.

I had a pet project for a while where I was extracting all the assets from Lineage 1 so I could try to recreate it.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#72

Post by graypegg »

jordwest wrote: post #6
graypegg wrote: post #5

The animation by Jordan West referenced near the end of the article is included in a really good video by him too! https://youtu.be/04oQ2jOUjkU It’s worth a watch! I personally prefer Jordan’s approach, which is more focused on the math than computation.

That’s me, thanks for the mention! In hindsight actually I’d probably have put a little more of the computation side in the video. Based on comments I’ve received I think a good portion of the audience is just looking to get something working and doesn’t necessarily want to understand what a matrix is to get there. I think this article is a great resource for that.

Totally fair! I do think it leads people down a more interesting path though, transform matrices and processing big bitmaps lead folks to shaders! Though a DIY-with-a-scripting-language-and-iteration would definitely be a fun follow up video if you ever feel like it!

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#75

Post by klodolph »

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…

> The sort of thing you'd solve in 30 seconds with Google in 2024.

I’ve implemented this in my own games and I remember that the solution was basically raycasting. But it was NOT some 30 seconds thing. It was a major effort anyway.

(There are of course other options, like rendering a picture with a different color for each object, and sampling the color to figure out what you clicked on. And “color” may just be a 1-channel integer object ID.)

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#76

Post by jayd16 »

actuallyalys wrote: post #69

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.)

Add a few more to the list. We usually render to a 2d screen so we usually fake 3d in 2d.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#77

Post by theandrewbailey »

actuallyalys wrote: post #69

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.)

What irritates me are the games that claim to be isometric but use perspective projection instead of orthographic projection.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#78

Post by Arelius »

Waterluvian wrote: post #50

Can anyone name an isometric 2D-rendered game they swear was 3D. Or a 3D game they swear was actually 2D? For some reason I find these most interesting. I could look up the answer but I swear Bastion is entirely 2D. Though the characters might be 3D models constrained to certain angles.

Iirc, Bastion's characters are 3d characters rendered to 2d videos.or maybe that was just transistor and later?

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#79

Post by setr »

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.

Are.na is an attempt at this, and I think has built up a decent community around it. Basically link/file storage + ability to navigate to other people’s lists storing the same link.

I don’t think it supports auto-archiving, though you could probably use it in conjunction with pinboard for that.

Re: Isometric Projection in Game Development

#80

Post by twic »

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.

Pinboard is a bit like this, but with little emphasis on the social aspect, and no maintenance.
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