Isometric : Need advices

[Nambew]

Hi,

 

For the next project at my job, we need to do a isometric game for mobile platform (iOS, Android). All the game art will be done in 2d because we don't have any 3d artist in the office. For the moment, we look at Unity for the technology. We never done this kind of game before and is a bit hard to find which way to choose.

 

My research on the Unity forum, people just say make the game in 3D that is easier.

 

For the 2D, you need to handle the z-sorting and collision. You have basicly 2 way to do this, you can render your scene from back to front, all your objects need to be 1x1 tile. The second way, you need to have all your object in 3D space and you do a depth sorting each frame.

 

The first way, I found a lot of tutorial on the web with differents languages.

http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:4

http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/introduction-to-isometric-engines-r744

 

The second way, I only found 2-3 pages.

http://mazebert.com/2013/04/18/isometric-depth-sorting/

http://bannalia.blogspot.de/2008/02/filmation-math.html

 

The 2d artist and game designer want objects to move under or over the background, example arch, bridge, tree. Anyone have experience with isometry and happy to share advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gio]

My 2 cents (disclaimer: I'm the author of an html5 isometric engine - see signature)

 

 

make the game in 3D that is easier

 

I disagree with that. Sure, making it in 2D using Unity is a bit challenging (mainly because Unity was designed and optimized for 3D games), but making it in 3D is also challenging for a completely different set of reasons. Some of them include having to create and manage your custom shaders, shadows, etc. Unless you want to use the default Unity solutions, but they are unlikely to be optimized for your specific needs - they may work but they're going to be fairly slow or not particularly good looking.

 

 

all your objects need to be 1x1 tile

 

Not true - you can have objects of different sizes and shapes. Sometimes, with irregular and weird shapes, you might have to split a single object into multiple sprites to get the sorting to work correctly, but you can still group several sprites into a single object from a logical point of view.

 

 

you do a depth sorting each frame

 

That's true, but you need depth sorting with the other method too (simpler depth sorting, but still). And even with this second method, you don't need a full depth sort every frame - there are tricks to speed it up, such as depth-sorting only some subsets of your objects that are near the objects that might have moved.

 

Also, one thing that is worth adding, is that with the second method you will have to implement your own pathfinding algorithm, and it isn't going to be fun.

[Nambew]

I not good enough to play with shader in 3D or do custom shadow algorithm, my knowledge with 3D are basic and old on some subjects. I will stay with 2D after reading your post.

 

I find a good example for handling tiles and graphics.

 

http://www.openspace-engine.com/support/tutorials/mapStructure

 

Thank you for your advices.