Isometric Support?

nsmadsen

Hey guys,

Sorry if this has been covered extensively but I'm trying to see how well supported, natively, isometric games are on Game Salad. I've been looking at some other engines that do not seem to handle it all to well. I'm a new game developer (mostly from the audio and design side) so programming is something very new for me. Any input, advice and suggestions would be greatly helpful and appreciated!

Thanks,

Nate

tenrdrmer

Isometric is just how your artwork looks. I have seen people do isometric stuff in GS. You just have to make sure you work out your art so it looks right.

Braydon_SFX

@Socks‌ has done some really cool Isometric stuff. He may be able to give some pointers.

Socks

@Braydon_SFX said:
Socks‌ has done some really cool Isometric stuff. He may be able to give some pointers.

Cheers @Braydon_SFX (and no I am not going to 'like' your post, getting far too dangerous )

Like tenrdrmer says, isometric is just how your artwork looks, you can do isometric in any piece of software, mechanics and art-wise it's just a case of sticking to the relevant angles of your chosen projection (frog, bird, gentleman, military and so on) when you design the game.

If you want the SDK to support 'native' isometric games, then you would be better off turning to 3D, something like Unity, and working in an axonometric projection, as far as I know Unity has an isometric projection, maybe even a few more exotic ones like dimetric or bird, military etc.

Here's an old video of a GS project I am working on:

nsmadsen

Thank you guys for the responses. Here's the basic deal: I've got a great artist making the art assets for me. He's quite experienced with Unity and we worked together on LEGO Universe.

He's voiced some concerns with isometric and game engines but mainly geared towards:

• some performance hit (although not much)
• sorting issues
• making sure the artwork looks "right" and not too long. I know he can handle this part.

Socks, you've got some good work! Any good tutorials on how to set things up? Or is it just a matter of placing the appropriate art assets and make sure the controls are set up properly?

Sorry for what's probably noob questions but I really appreciate all of the help!

Thanks,

Nate

Socks

@nsmadsen said:
Thank you guys for the responses. Here's the basic deal: I've got a great artist making the art assets for me. He's quite experienced with Unity and we worked together on LEGO Universe.

LEGO Universe - impressive stuff !

• some performance hit (although not much)

Isometric, either in a 2D engine like GameSalad or a 3D engine like Unity won't factor into the equation, for a 2D engine the elements in an isometric game are images just like any other set of images, so no performance hit between a top down chess game and an isometric game . . . (all other things being equal).

Same deal with a 3D engine like Unity, there (educated guess) will be no performance hit with an isometric game, you are just switching the render engine to a different projection.

• sorting issues

You mean layers ? Yes, this is an issue, you effectively need to design your own layering system to move objects around each other, there are a few viable solutions.

• making sure the artwork looks "right" and not too long. I know he can handle this part.

Not sure what 'not too long' means ? But there are advantages to each approach here, Unity has many when it comes to 3D, but one advantage a 2D engine has is that you can employ really high quality renders, the kind that would bring Unity to its knees, radiosity, global illumination, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering and so on . . . as with a 2D engine you are only using images (pre rendered 3D images and sequences) you can really go to town on the quality, a fantastically rendered 3D image with over the top anti-aliasing, reflections, shadows, transparency . . and all the stuff I mention above (radiosity, global illumination, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering . . . etc etc) will be exactly the same strain on a mobile device's processor as a low quality, poorly anti-alised image with none of the high-end 3D stuff.

@nsmadsen said:
Socks, you've got some good work! Any good tutorials on how to set things up? Or is it just a matter of placing the appropriate art assets and make sure the controls are set up properly?

Yep, that's pretty much what it is.

stueynet

@Socks said:

How in sweet heaven did you do that in GS? I have seen and played around with creative layering etc... but is it even viable to make something complex in GS? Does faking the layers with Booleans and Rules become unmanageable?

Also any chance you could just post one of the image files for the cube player? I just want to wrap my head around what you are doing there.

Socks

@stueynet said:
How in sweet heaven did you do that in GS? I have seen and played around with creative layering etc... but is it even viable to make something complex in GS? Does faking the layers with Booleans and Rules become unmanageable?

Not really, probably depends on each individual game, I'm only using two layers.

When I spawn an obstacle, all the little detectors are spawned around it, so setting up obstacles is really straightforward, once set up you can move around them.

Also any chance you could just post one of the image files for the cube player? I just want to wrap my head around what you are doing there.

Nothing weird going on, for the main green cube just some stuff on top layer and some stuff on a lower layer (the reflections) - for the white obstacles you have top layer and reflection below, lower layer and reflection below - the little detectors you see around it in the video (invisible in gameplay) tell it which layers to switch on and off (using alpha) when the green cube treads on them, hard to explain, quite straightforward in reality.

stueynet

@Socks said:

Thanks so much for that. I am just going to scrape my brain off my keyboard.

Socks

@stueynet said:
Thanks so much for that. I am just going to scrape my brain off my keyboard.

Lol