Perfect Isometric With Game Editor

[Cleve Blakemore]

I have finally gotten isometric drawing nigh-perfect as of version 1.09 recently. I have been toying with my "demo" project for over two years, refining it to get the tech right.

The example that floats around of BeeKeeper is badly flawed. So are several other examples of isometric I have downloaded from up here. They don't work very well for larger areas because the paradigm requires every DrawActor event to be called and the reference is off the viewport as the screen height for sorting. This causes a lot of artifacts and incorrect depths on object. It's not usable at all for large areas.

There's a much better way using a known region around an area to sort all static items from top to bottom. It only has to be done once in their CreateActor method and then the actor can disable all events as a static display object after that. For determining walkability, you need to use an invisible actor at the base of objects to prevent characters from walking through them. Otherwise you avoid DrawActor script events for all but the 5% of objects on screen that need to sort themselves dynamically each time they move.

My previous method for internal regions was way too complex to be practical, I have discovered the best thing to do when entering a large structure is to change to another region view optimized for internal isometric drawing. It also does away with the need to manage rooftops vanishing or appearing. You can use transparency to cause walls in internal isometric regions to display the character behind them, but it really slows down on mobile phones and pocket PCs if you implement this with a lot of columns the player will pass behind. I figured ways to lay out areas differently to mostly avoid the need for transparent walls except in certain special instances.

I got rid of the idea of using "invisible priority maps" altogether, which immediately speeded up everything enormously. It was also making development too complicated to do more than a map a week because of all the masks required.

I also finally found out how to render isometric graphics in Bryce, which was a big breakthrough because it lets me use a lot of free resources to create my graphics with. That was one big thing holding me back because I didn't have a lot of good isometric art to use for testing.

[edh]

Demo?

[fp2]

yes, a demo would be much abliged

[BlarghNRawr]

did you make 2 accounts?
Fp1 and Fp2?