Just what is ISOMETRIC?

[villain of the story]

It's play-VD-game time!

I've never criticized technical aspects,

I never said you have criticised technical aspects in the past.

including camera controls

Bloodlines combat was skill-based, and the skill-based part worked very well. If the camera wasn't fucked, it would have been perfect. Definitely wasn't boring.

But maybe that doesn't qualify as a criticism.

Joking aside, fair enough and I agree but my point stands. Camera in 3D is tricky business. Few "isometric" 3D games have done it right and most of those that did, did it with strict limitations eg. StarCraft 2. So if you're gonna give a fair amount of controls over camera, I think it will only help if you add in the option to switch to orthographic/parallel projection or a maybe an option set camera's field of vision so we can set a very narrow angle, zoom out a little bit and play it like the latter (which shouldn't be difficult for AoD as you wouldn't need to implement anything new :wink: )

You missed the go-to example for "rotated military projection" (a.k.a. "gonna barf sideways projection") so named because it was so used: it has the distinction of preserving unmolested floorplans while providing height information and orienting major features on the cardinal. It's also piss-easy to code for, because the worldspace X/Y remain at 1:1, both to each other and the screenspace.

I omitted it because that specific bit of information about preservation of floor plans did nothing for the argument (ie. "isometric in games means more than isometric"). And it came up later on this same page anyway. It's a subtype of oblique projection.

Isometric view is still easier to say than top down view with perspective, even if the perspective in question isn't really isometric.

"Stop worrying about crap like that and just call it isometric like everbody else" was the point.

What i would really like to know is how companies still believe top down/isometric/whatever perspective is no longer commercially viable when you have stupid shit like faggotville bankrolling on big publishers and their shitty AAA next gen crap.

They are clinically stupid.

 

[villain of the story]

heh thats pretty cool with the U7 pics, my god they should have done the game with that 45 degree rotation, it is insanely more pleasing to the eye than the regular fuckedupness

I agree it looks much better - and this one was more mouse-friendly, so they could've gotten away with it too. However in this case it has the benefit of Exult's resolution, Exult's filtering, and Photoshop's rotation. There's likely no way they'd've gotten the bold-lined scenery to look so crisp on the 45 at lower resolutions in the days before sub-pixel shenanigans (perhaps the sprites would look better for it though?) We can only speculate, but it would have been a very different looking game for more than just the most obvious reason.

Perhaps the developers of Exult should work on the option to rotate the scene!

 

[hiver]

Fucking shit... i just saw bloodlines in isometric view...
close one ofcourse, but still... shit, that would have been nice to play.
unlike original.

 

[villain of the story]

The only way to experience the streets of San Monica, The Asylum, the Hollywood is the first person way.

But I would appreciate isometric TB for combat though I'm not sure that would work nicely in some parts of the game.

 

[gromit]

Is there some reason it looks so much more appealing or have I just been conditioned to expect things to be at that angle?

Both. For most of your life, "up" has been in the direction of "up." Also, in my eye (and I'd guess in that of many other people) the smaller patterns - for instance the cobblestone road - are less harsh on the 45 as well. That bit's outside my realm but makes a lot of intuitive sense: it's easier to partition space U/D/L/R, especially when rectangularly framed by your upright monitor.

Nobody asked, but in the case of the 90-clockwise (the one with |/_ corners) I'm pretty sure the sprite-work itself is what keeps it from looking as good rotated the full 90. Especially the shading: it's the only of the three pictures where the light isn't inarguably coming from above, relative to the screen. Similarly the underlying (un-transformed, imagined) shape of the foliage becomes noticeably elliptical in the altered shots. Definitely a foreshortening "cheat." I'd imagine we didn't notice as much in the original because the tree's stretched dimension is parallel to the long side of the aspect. But sorry, you're never going to un-see it now, bitches.

 

[gromit]

Not that I needed to inexplicably defend myself against mostly imagined accusations, but discussing the actual uses and properties and uses of different projections don't interest me, and moreover it was diluting my pendantry. Don't forget to check made's link though, because it's pretty cool.

Oh, that is a cool link. Anyway, I'd right up the differences in handling elevation and slope in different projections - think marble madness - but no more lunch time.

 

[villain of the story]

Be my guest to discuss the oh so relevant actual uses and properties of different projections which this thread wasn't/isn't about.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Isometric projection for dumbfucks:

As for more interesting projections,check this oldie,but goldie:

 

[Damned Registrations]

Is there some reason it looks so much more appealing or have I just been conditioned to expect things to be at that angle?

It's a screwy impossible angle, like an Escher painting. If you're looking at a box such that you can see 3 faces of it, your frame of reference for 'up' isn't going to be parallel to your frame of reference for 'away' like it is in the screenshot. With the walls being straight vertical like they are, you shouldn't be able to see their sides.

There's a similar problem with it when it's at 45 degrees (the now vertical lines things like the trees and corners of walls and everything that is going 'up' when they're not dead centre, but it's a much much milder effect. 'up' being in the same direction as 'away' like it is in the 45 degree pic isn't perfectly accurate, but it's damned close.

 

[gromit]

There's also a distinct lack of foreshortening. But shhhhhhh he'll hear us

 

[asper]

Ultima pictures definitely inclined this thread.

It is really odd, the regular U7 pics stand out as some of the worst in the thread due to that angle.

But with the 45 degree rotation they're suddenly far, far more palatable.

Is there some reason it looks so much more appealing or have I just been conditioned to expect things to be at that angle?

I think it's because in the 45 degree rotated view, the walls are vertical - a straight line from the ground to the sky. In the original view, they are diagonal, which makes it seem af if the viewer is looking at them from an angle.

edit: damnregistrations beat me to it

 

[made]

It is really odd, the regular U7 pics stand out as some of the worst in the thread due to that angle.

But with the 45 degree rotation they're suddenly far, far more palatable.

Can't say it makes any difference to me, both look fine imo.

Maybe my brian is so advanced that it subconsciencely rotates the picture into the right angle for me? xD

 

[villain of the story]

Dropping this here from the other thread:

People refer to Fallout as a game from an isometric perspective, but Cain pointed out that the perspective is in fact “Cavalier Oblique.”

 

[Severian Silk]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/isometric.18751/

 

[villain of the story]

Cool. Brilliant example from that thread:

Here are two screenshots of GearHead 2:

As you can see, the orthographic one looks much better.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

Ultima pictures definitely inclined this thread.

It is really odd, the regular U7 pics stand out as some of the worst in the thread due to that angle.

But with the 45 degree rotation they're suddenly far, far more palatable.

Is there some reason it looks so much more appealing or have I just been conditioned to expect things to be at that angle?

The problem with the U7 perspective is that it defies 'gravity'

In every other viewpoint 'down' = bottom-center of the screen = part of the scene closer to you. This is the view you experience for 99% of your life. When you experience any other angle it's because you are lying on your side and you know you're not upright because you can feel it.

With U7 you are sitting in a chair upright with gravity directly below you but gravity projecting out of the screen toward you 45 degrees down and to the right. Homo sapiens can't cope with the confusion.

 

[Severian Silk]

Ultima pictures definitely inclined this thread.

It is really odd, the regular U7 pics stand out as some of the worst in the thread due to that angle.

But with the 45 degree rotation they're suddenly far, far more palatable.

Is there some reason it looks so much more appealing or have I just been conditioned to expect things to be at that angle?

The problem with the U7 perspective is that it defies 'gravity'

In every other viewpoint 'down' = bottom-center of the screen = part of the scene closer to you. This is the view you experience for 99% of your life. When you experience any other angle it's because you are lying on your side and you know you're not upright because you can feel it.

With U7 you are sitting in a chair upright with gravity directly below you but gravity projecting out of the screen toward you 45 degrees down and to the right. Homo sapiens can't cope with the confusion.

huh?

 

[Kron]

U7 looks great graphic-detail-wise, but the perspective is fucked up. The angle of view is too "top down". It looks weird.

As was said above, the elevation angle is not so much towards the bottom of the screen, but to the center, and it feels unnatural.

 

[Severian Silk]

Dropping this here from the other thread:

People refer to Fallout as a game from an isometric perspective, but Cain pointed out that the perspective is in fact “Cavalier Oblique.”

I don't think Cain is right. I think Fallout uses trimetric projection. Oblique is sometimes headache-inducing, and I don't get that from Fallout.

 

[Jaesun]

U7 looks great graphic-detail-wise, but the perspective is fucked up. The angle of view is too "top down". It looks weird.

it was 1992 what were you expecting?

 

[Kron]

What does the year have to do?
Darklands was from 1992 and got its iso right.

 

[Jaesun]

That I can agree with. I'd forgotten when Darklands came out.

And yeah THAT perspective would have been better (they got it right with Ultima VIII).

 

[Infinitron]

Never understood all the whining about U7's perspective.

 

[SCO]

On the other hand, U7 suffers alot less than that fallout 'lost things in wall corners thing. Thou TBH it still did, as well as all overhead games. I remember torment doing this for instance.

 

[Dexter]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...metric-engine-again.76197/page-5#post-2276665