Renzatic on 1/6/2008 at 19:52
Quote Posted by Yakoob
One more thing I forgot to mention - many 2D isometric games (such as diablo or arcanum) actually create fully animated 3D models, but instead of rendering them realtime onto a 2D background map, they pre-render them into 2D sprites (which looks shittier than if they rendered real-time).
Only because they're shrunk down to a tiny ass resolution. A prerendered sprite sporting a healthy amount of pixels would look just as good as the source material.
Ajare on 1/6/2008 at 20:27
Well, kind of. The advantage of prerendering the models is that you can use high-resolution models and textures, with all the fancy sub-surface scattering skin shaders (SSSSSs!) etc that you want, which you wouldn't be able to do in realtime. (That said, you'll be rendering the sprite in a resolution at which most of this detail will be lost. There's a post-mortem of (
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20001025/schaefer_01.htm) Diablo2 at Gamasutra where you can see that the models they used are actually pretty crap, but you wouldn't know it from the game). In this respect a sprite will look better than anything a 3d model rendered in realtime can do.*
The big problem with this approach comes with trying to do realistic lighting/shadowing with a 2d sprite. Diablo2 rendered a separate shadow for every frame, but even then they didn't cast correctly against the world.
*Computers are now fast enough that lowish-resolution 3D models can be used in realtime, because they are drawn far away enough that they you cannot distinguish them from high-resolution.
Benvox2 on 2/6/2008 at 04:18
Ok well i wont be learning programming any time soon, however i assume it is possible to begin creating graphics such as terrain and other simple objects for a fully 2D isometric game, that will be compatible for later extracting into FIFE?
Anyone know any programs that i could maybe use to create such objects?
possibly a tutorial or two?
Thanks again all for the great replies!
Renzatic on 2/6/2008 at 06:40
Quote Posted by Benvox2
Anyone know any programs that i could maybe use to create such objects?
Thanks again all for the great replies!
On the Open Source front, I recommend (
http://www.blender.org/) Blender for your modelling and rendering needs, and (
http://www.gimp.org/) The Gimp to help with the painting & drawing.
I haven't used Blender at all (the UI looks about awful for the thing), but I can vouch for The Gimp. It's a great alternative to Photoshop.
Benvox2 on 2/6/2008 at 07:10
Im having trouble as I have no idea where to start in making graphics.
1. Check engine Transparency
2. Check engine sizes/angles
3.
4.
5....
Then what do I do? How do i start actually "drawing" up the graphics?
Thanks again!!
henke on 2/6/2008 at 15:47
MS Paint?
Yakoob on 2/6/2008 at 21:21
Quote Posted by henke
MS Paint?
Yup, that's exactly it. Once you know how the tiles are supposed to look and what goes into them, just start making them. Create a tileset - a set of tile that can be used to create a consistant area (for instance grass middle, grass left edge, grass right edge etc. house bottom left, house bottom middle, house bottom right etc. river going left, river going right, river split etc). Something like this: (
http://www.geocities.com/jamie.chang89/TheTileSet.JPG)
Ulukai on 3/6/2008 at 17:36
MS Paint, lollers :D
Do yourself and everyone else a favour and get hold of (
http://www.getpaint.net/) Paint.NET, at least. It's free, and is well suited to such a task.
Benvox2 on 4/6/2008 at 11:48
Thanks for more great replies, hopefully ill be able to try this out soons...
