by date
TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 4
TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 4
| Name: | Neo Binedell |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Nov 23, 2006 | |
| Rating: |  4.8 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Neo Binedell |
Blog post
- TGB Iso Builder -
Continued from my previous blog post
Well I've been hanging out with my new baby girl after some late nights doing 3 overlapping projects and finally got some time to get back into the swing of things with the Iso Builder.
A thought struck me recently that an iso engine is at its core view dependent and so instead of having the engine figure out what should be drawn when I realized that users did not expect the engine to know.
What I needed to do is give the user the power to specify exactly how things should be ordered instead.
So I once again rewrote the map structure to be more intuitive for users and now tiles can be referenced by map column, row and layer. All that layer is there for is to statically order tiles intra-cell, period. A layer does not have implicit elevation, that is set separately. This speeds up render ordering immensely and is also more intuitive to work with, e.g:
Quote:
%map.setTile( 0, 0, 0, "grass" );
%map.stackTile( 0, 0, "tree" );
Another thing I am busy with is micro-collision for each cell. Each map cell is sub divided into 5x5 sub cells which can be set as blocking, etc and is a lot faster to check against that doing ray/box intersections, etc.
Each tile can have its own grid as well which is overlaid onto the cells they cover. This allows us to assign blocking per tile as well as directly onto the map. Of course this is layered as well so you can have things like bridges which allow movement both underneath and over.
Of course then I rewrote the rendering pipeline as well and added some of the features I was yacking about before, e.g. occluder masking (i.e. static objects fade so we can see dynamic objects that are occluded by them):
At the moment I am busy getting the editor working again with all the new changes as well as adding tools to make creating and editing world boxes, image offsets, frame aligning, etc for the visuals.
( I also figured out a way to auto-create world boxes from the images supplied which are easily editable using sliders)
Well I'll get back to work and hopefully update more often...
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 03/05/08 - Iso-phagus 11/12/07 - Theora Video Seek, Loop And Callback Support 06/17/07 - FX Composer 2 - Public Beta Released 04/27/07 - TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 6: nxAnimator! 02/20/07 - TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 5 11/23/06 - TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 4 08/16/06 - TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 3 06/14/06 - TGB Isometric Add-On Pack - Part 2 - Cont. |
|---|
Submit your own resources!| Chip Lambert (Nov 23, 2006 at 02:34 GMT) |
| Anthony Harris (Nov 23, 2006 at 04:51 GMT) |
i've scoured the net for iso products and quality ones are hard to find...especially for mac.
good luck and take your time. anything worth doing, is worth doing right.
| Tom Bentz (Nov 24, 2006 at 10:01 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Marc Schaerer (Dec 05, 2006 at 21:16 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
I've come up with some interesting game idea which either will be iso or true 3D and currently heavily unsure which language to use (Blitz, DBP, some C++ based or just nothing ^^).
This would make the decision far easier :)
| Clint Herron (Dec 30, 2006 at 04:01 GMT) |
Somehow, I missed this post of yours last month. Just wanted to give some feedback, and say that the screenshots look great, and I'm anxiously looking forward to the release!
--clint
| Matthews_30 (Jan 09, 2007 at 17:25 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
thanks and very good job!
matt.
| GamerGirl (Jan 12, 2007 at 22:50 GMT) |
| OneST8 (Jan 14, 2007 at 21:35 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Guaranteed purchase of TGB Pro and this kit when it is released.
If you need *any* help, I'm more than willing to offer my time and talents at no cost.
| Neo Binedell (Jan 15, 2007 at 11:22 GMT) |
Seriously though I would hope within a maximum of three months, but as always things tend to get in the way just to make people saying things like this look really stupid when they miss the deadline. The fact that I'm a bit of a perfectionist (meaning I'll bugger around on the the last 0.1% that no one in the world will ever notice) just makes it even worse.
However, my thoughts have been roaming toward the idea of doing an Early Adopter binary version so I can feedback from users and add whatever is needed by people using it in the wild, (pretty much like TGB itself) and so people can get their lil paws on it sooner.
This solves the problems above quite nicely and (I'm a huge fan of iterative development) can only lead to a better product in the end and also cuts fluff that I might have thought someone somewhere would need someday but which will never be used.
But most of all it keeps me from looking like a complete twat when I start hitting the Dai Katana scenario.
| Simon Foster (Jan 16, 2007 at 17:02 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Daniel Magnan (Jan 30, 2007 at 20:03 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Fred Perry (Jun 29, 2007 at 16:10 GMT) |
| Neo Binedell (Jun 29, 2007 at 21:32 GMT) |
You must be a member and be logged in to either append comments or rate this resource.
