Isometric Development Project
 

Hi guys.

For the past month or so, I've been working on my own mobile 2D isometric game engine for a game I'm going to be releasing on the Android market in a couple of months time (because Java was an easier step from C++ than Objective-C for the App Store). However, now that I have most of the main components of the engine done (except the player), I'm going to need a graphics artist.

Now, I know you artists aren't fond of giving up your time for something you might not even know exists at the minute, or for something that you don't know will go anywhere, so I'll just give you the rundown on what's included in my isometric engine so far:

• Isometric diamond map generation of varying sizes.
• Level scrolling
• Perspective depth sorting of objects *(for 1x1 object bases only)*
• Editing mode:
  • Can change tiles and place objects
  • Can delete tiles and place objects
• Multi-touch support

I've got most of the planning done as to what direction I want to go in with this game, but I don't want to give too much away just yet.

Now hold your horses, this may sound interesting, but if you don't know what an isometric perspective is, you'll probably want to know what I'm talking about. Instead of giving you the mumbo-jumbo on what it is/how it works/what it does, I'll just show you an example of it:

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20...on-d4asgvm.png
This is not my game engine; just an example. I'll post some images later...

It's basically a 2D drawing rotated 45 degrees and viewed from an upwards angle not that different from Graal's. I assume a few of you have played the Sims and Fallout 1&2, so you'll have played in this sort of environment before. However, my engine won't be supporting ground layering because I only need one level of ground for what I'm constructing.

Like I said, I'm not going to give too much more away, but if you're interested and you can draw images in an isometric perspective - or better yet, have had experience working on something like this - send me a PM and we'll discuss it more. I won't be asking a great deal from you, just a small image here and there; nothing demanding at all.
However, I can't offer you payment of any kind at the minute for your services so it'll have to be for your own enjoyment for now, but when the game goes live, I could give you a small reward for your services depending on how much I've asked of you and how much I'm earning from it. I don't know if I'd be willing to give someone a percentage of the profits, but I'll wait and see.

If you have any questions or suggestions, do tell!

Wow awnesome! Good luck

*sees title* Infernus=automatically disqualified

Technically, traditional isometric lines are around 22.6º(2:1 pixel ratio/step), not 45. There are very few games that do the 45º stuff... Boktai is one of the more well-known of them:

http://www.vizzed.com/videogames/gba...20Django-2.png

But it is a very weird angle of graphics to look at, and even weirder to make.

Of course you didn't mean that angle, but the more you know :P

Sorry, when I say that, I mean the tiles have been rotated by 45 degrees and have been flattened in a 2:1 ratio. I usually explain isometric perspective like that.

Here ya go, nabbed from a thread over at Pixelation.

But if you have to explain to your graphical artist what iso is... you might want to look for another artist. Just sayin'.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

Sounds interesting. If you need any GUI or odd pieces of work, feel free to message me. Good luck with your project!

Goodluck finding one xD anyways i wish you the best!

Dayummm that picture looks sexciii

Bump!

The need for a pixel artist is really hindering the development process of my application at the minute, and there's only so much coding I can do with placeholder images. Again, if you have lots of spare time this summer and wouldn't mind helping out with the development of an Android application, send a PM my way!

good luck on this :) sorry i'm not very skilled but i hope you find someone

good luck :)

Damn... Can not wait to see this, if you need any other form of help besides GFX ill be happy to help this project.

Ill be watching this thread hopefully for updates :D

It's been a while and there haven't been many updates as of yet (mainly optimisations and code prototypes), but myself and Bigfoot, who is now the lead graphics artist for my game, have reached the point where all the fun begins with this project! You'll be seeing frequent updates from now on. For the meantime though, here's images of the engine as it is so far (nothing that special):

A nice side view of Bigfoot's grass tiles (WIP):


I wrote Bigfoot's initials on the map :3!:

You've been busy :p

I really like those grass tiles. Good job Bigfoot! :0

Nice stuff!

Thanks (:

I'm not really that great at pixel art but I would love to help :o

That saturation hurts my eyes. Might wanna tone it down.

Can't wait to play :p

a bit too bright, I agree

Prettier?

Attachment 12360

Much.

w00t! Height maps are now included, which means objects can now be stacked on top of each other.

Attachment 12403
Now all I need are some prettier things to stack...

And now we're a three-man team! WMS, Bigfoot and I have all set off on this adventure together, for better or worse. They'll be doing the graphics work for the project (no mean feat) and we'll all be throwing ideas we have into the project, so expect something wonderful. :love:

So, to recap, the things that have been included so far - and this pretty much constitutes most of the ground work this engine needed - are:

• Infinite map generation
• Perspective depth sorting
• Map editing, which can further be broken down into:
  • Placing objects and tiles
  • Editing already placed objects and tiles
  • Removing objects and tiles
  • Object stacking (not sure I'll add tile layers yet...)

The list seems rather small, but the code... omg... too long for a list that short. ;-;

Anyway, I'm struggling to decide what sort of movement system I should implement for the playable portion of the game. Should I use a virtual joystick that allows free roam all over the map in every single angle of direction, or should I stick with a d-pad that only lets you walk in 4?
However, here's what I'm planning to implement over the next few days:

• Lots of different furniture types (sofas, bed, tables, chairs - just need some images here).
• Tile layers (I don't know, should I?)
• Playable characters

I'll keep the list short because I don't want to look back at this and cry at the prospect of having to get a lot done over the next few days.

Looks cool.

Looks great! Did you learn to program on your own or did you take classes? I'm going to college in a few days for Game Programming :D

That looks nice, but it would look better without the grid

You could stack grass too, like the image in the first post.

I liked the grass when it was brighter - but to each his own I suppose

I actually learnt it all on my own after I moved on from GScript. I've probably picked up so many bad habits from teaching myself, but the stuff compiles so I don't really care. I envy you though, I'd love to study that sort of stuff in a few days rather than have to wait for another year to get into university to study it. =[

I tried, believe me. Hours and hours of messy and laborious coding! It was just difficult to do with the software rendering approach I had taken at the start, so I thought about not including it. However, I've started using OpenGL ES, so tile height-maps should be on their way shortly. Uber excited!

I might change it back to that colour for a cartoonish sort of feel to the game. I just don't know what direction I want the game to go at this stage.

Well, the isometric engine is finished. It's pretty much ready to start developing a game with. However, I won't be doing anything with it for the meantime, as I am no graphics artist and I have no one else, therefore I can't build any sort of decent-looking game.

I may just license the software out to interested parties. However, I'd imagine that I'd be updating and adding a lot of stuff to the engine as different people need different functionality.

So, for those that may be interested, here's some technical jargon about the engine:

Maybe a lil' screenshot :D?

Sure thing. Threw this together really quick and made a grass castle. :L

http://s14.postimg.org/l8crwtr81/Scr...4_00_26_07.png

Oh! A friend is working on a Isometric game too, and we used thoses tiles too for starting xD
But we used a program for level making with different layers, i don't remember the name though

Downsider made an isometric layers-thinger similar to that image while he worked on UN.

Have you thought of putting little shadows next to walls?
Is there any code to save and load maps to files?

What iso games are you playing? :o Isometric actually derived in an attempt to make 2D games look 3D because they lacked the ability. Even back on NES you had games like Qbert. Even today I don't see many games emulating isometric perspective with 3D graphics, and even if there are I mostly remember 2D iso games like Final Fantasy Tactics.

I don't play many isometric games, but when I was developing my engine, the main solution given for the problem of ordering objects in order of perspective was to simply use OpenGL's depth buffer because most people couldn't be bothered with the maths behind it, therefore I took it to believe that most iso games were rendered in 3D nowadays, but I do know there are a few (more modern) games around that are 3D but just change the camera's perspective to make it look isometric although they're probably less well known (don't ask me to name them, I came across them researching for my project).

Disgaea is a good example.

Disgaea sucks though.