Benvox2 on 30/5/2008 at 03:17
Hey all,
I have recently been playing some great older games called: Desperados: Wanted dead or alive, Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood and the Commandos series.
I was wondering if anyone can educate me on how these engines work, they are all 2D and look great, the characters are 2D sprites or something no?
Are their any open to use isometric 2D engines around that I could maybe have a play around on?
Any info on 2D game engines or these games is VERY welcomed.
Thanks much all!
Renzatic on 30/5/2008 at 05:22
There are no differences between a 2D isometric game and your bog standard 2D overhead games other than the perspective.
(
http://www.yoyogames.com/make) Game Maker 7 is a fairly swanky and beginner friendly 2D suite that supports the perspective. I believe there are even a few tutorials there on the subject.
Benvox2 on 30/5/2008 at 05:46
Thanks for the reply Renzatic, Im checking out Game Maker 7 right now, is it possible to make games to the same caliber as Desperados and Robin hood with it, or is it a bit too simplified?
henke on 30/5/2008 at 06:00
I'm pretty sure the characters in Commandos 2 were rendered in 3D, not sure how much else was though. You could also rotate the camera around the interior scenes in it but seeing as it was only along one axis and there weren't multiple levels above eachother I guess it might've been some sorta 2.5D trickery,like they used in old pre-Quake FPS's.
Renzatic on 30/5/2008 at 07:06
I've only poked and prodded around the thing for a couple of days, and didn't get much deeper than making a game that let you smack a square dot around with your mouse. I'm not the most qualified person to ask on the subject here.
So, with that in mind, based on the games I've seen made with it, and all the stuff I've read about it, I think it has more than enough power under the hood to handle those games.
Rogue Keeper on 30/5/2008 at 09:34
Arcanum had so lovely user friendly editor, I'm surprised there weren't more mods for it back then. Or that I didn't learn to work with it better.
Yakoob on 30/5/2008 at 10:52
From a programming perspective, there's two ways: one is full 3D from an isometric angle (ala NWN), another is simply 2D (baldrus gate, arcanum). I am guessing you're inquirying about the latter.
Usually it works like a tile engine. Meaning, your world is made of adjecent tiles. Wheres in regular "over the top" games (JRPGs) it's just bunch of squares next to each other:
########
########
########
########
In isometric, these are rotated 45 degrees (or some such) and each new row is offset so they align:
*************
_*************
*************
_*************
(think of the stars as squares rotated 45 degrees).
Just as in regular tile engines, you define which of these can be walked on, which cannot. Additionally you can put objects on these tiles (chests, trees, etc) to make your world more varied and interactive.
While the world is displayed at an angle (hence isometric), inside the logic it's usually treated as a regular tile engine (squares perfectly aligned next to each other and not rotated at 45 degrees), as it makes it considerably easier to manipulate positions, check for collisions, etc.
That's the very basics of how it works. There's a whole other more complex stuff that gets into it (multi-leveled worlds instead of flat (which can be faked with simple tiles as above, to a degree), path finding and manouvering, objects, sound engine, input etc.)
Thirith on 30/5/2008 at 11:26
For me, Ultima VII and Serpent Isle were pretty much the best that classic tile-based iso gaming had to offer. I still love how detailed the worlds are.
Matthew on 30/5/2008 at 11:43
Are they technically isometric?
Thirith on 30/5/2008 at 11:58
My head isn't up for the mathematics necessary to ascertain whether it's real or pseudo-isometric. I'm afraid I'll have to leave answering that question to someone else.
