I did a little research and I've chatted with a few developers from Black Isle, Creators of the Blader's Gate RPG series, what they use for the background is 1 huge hand draw BMP. Then they place other images over the map like tiles(Byond-PNG). Also for 2-3 tile high isometric 3d rendered characters, you could link them up as 1 player, and make the middle or bottom tile the base tile. It wouldn't be true isometric as the mouse pointer is not able to pick/grab in a true isometric fasion also the tile blitter is not done in true isometrics either, unless??? Is there a way to offset tiles in BYOND? If so then with some minor adjustment, tiles could be plotted in Isometric giving the game a Diablo game look and feel.
Just some ideas I've wondered about.
LJR
ID:154264
 Feb 23 2002, 9:33 pm
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LordJR wrote:
Is there a way to offset tiles in BYOND? If so then with some minor adjustment, tiles could be plotted in Isometric giving the game a Diablo game look and feel. It's not clear to me why you need to be able to offset things to do isometric? Anyway, Living & Dead is isometric, with layers and all that jazz. | |
Deadron wrote:
It's not clear to me why you need to be able to offset things to do isometric? For L&D, I often skirt the need for offsets by drawing walls double-wide. I think what he's saying is that if you wanted a finer level of control over the map, you'd have a single wall graphic that took up half the width, but then you'd need an option to offset it vertically. | |
Yes, with the icon procs available in the BYOND beta version you can offset the tiles however you like.
It could get a little tricky if you want it completely free roaming mobs that can be offset any ammount of pixels within a tile. You would potentially be sending up to 4096 version of the same icon to clients and have to have a very advanced 4 tile mob system just to make it look like a single tile mob is offset within a tile. (You need one extra tile vertically for vertical offsets and one extra horizontally for horizontal offsets.)
If all you want is a psuedo isometric view it is much easier. You would really only need one extra copy of each icon, shifted up 16 pixels. That would add an extra icon vertically, but you are already considering 2 to 3 tile high mobs, so that should be easy. You'll probably want to make custom movement icon_states as well, so your players don't get a 16 pixel jump when moving side to side.
Since there are only 2 icons for each player, you could even prerender them and not worry about transforming them with the icon procs.