Posted by Rockson

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

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. =[

Posted by TNR

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

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

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!

Posted by Crag

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

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:

Spoiler

Technical Jargon:

Whilst a lot of isometric games are 3D, (technically orthographic but w/e) this engine is actually 2-dimensional. This makes it far easier for graphics artists as you don't need to make models, you can draw 2D sprites.
The engine can run about 200-300 sprites on-screen before it starts to drop below 60 FPS.

Some miscellaneous stuff:

• OpenGL ES 1.1 rendering pipeline.
• Written in Java.
• Map scrolling.
• Objects culled to the screen dimensions for performance.
• Perspective depth-sorting for any 3D object dimensions without a Z-buffer (purely software rendering, hardest part of isometric engines).
• Supports object layering.
• 3D bounds checking.
• Touch event simplifier (instead of all that MotionEvent bull****).

 

Posted by Kavan

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:

Spoiler

Technical Jargon:

Whilst a lot of isometric games are 3D, (technically orthographic but w/e) this engine is actually 2-dimensional. This makes it far easier for graphics artists as you don't need to make models, you can draw 2D sprites.
The engine can run about 200-300 sprites on-screen before it starts to drop below 60 FPS.

Some miscellaneous stuff:

• OpenGL ES 1.1 rendering pipeline.
• Written in Java.
• Map scrolling.
• Objects culled to the screen dimensions for performance.
• Perspective depth-sorting for any 3D object dimensions without a Z-buffer (purely software rendering, hardest part of isometric engines).
• Supports object layering.
• 3D bounds checking.
• Touch event simplifier (instead of all that MotionEvent bull****).

Maybe a lil' screenshot ?  

Posted by Trakan

Maybe a lil' screenshot ?

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

http://s14.postimg.org/l8crwtr81/Screenshot_2013_09_04_00_26_07.png (Unsupported image host)  

Posted by Kavan

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

http://s14.postimg.org/l8crwtr81/Screenshot_2013_09_04_00_26_07.png (Unsupported image host)

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?  

Posted by Kavan

Whilst a lot of isometric games are 3D, (technically orthographic but w/e) this engine is actually 2-dimensional.

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.  

Posted by Dusty

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.