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Old school Isometric RPG hardship

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Oct 26, 2016
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So this all goes back to some years ago when I had been wanting to make an isometric rpg for ages - similar in art style to Baldurs gate or perhaps Spiderweb's rpgs, something like that. I had been dreaming up this idea (over many bathtub sessions) where I would create a small open world with complex factions and where choices have true meaning and so on.

In hindsight GOD KNOWS WHY I decided to undertake this task. To be honest the whole creation process so far has been a misery and its not going to get easier the further along I get.

Anyway, to begin, as with any construction project the first step was to look for some tools and materials.

After some searching I arrived at the conclusion that there are two major technical blockages to achieving this goal:-
1) Suitable art.
2) Suitable game engine.

I knew that I didn't want it to run on DOSBOX, I want it to run on modern machines straight on the OS.

Naturally I took a look at the big game engines like Unity. After a few weeks I concluded that Unity is a ****** pile of shit for making old school isometric games. The assets suck. Unity just is NOT suitable for extensions. And the art styles in the asset store just don't suit either. And Unity's GUI system sucks and I hate NGUI...so that was rejected.

I brought RPG maker and whilst it has potential for that old school vibe, the GUI aspects just sucks and theres not too much decent art (that doesn't look like Zelda) and I didn't want to learn a new system of scripting. And those godamn blip blip sounds are everywhere and everything looks and sounds like a crummy JRPG. So I rejected that.

I finally decided that I would just have to tough it out and roll my own. So I selected Monogame as the platform as I can leverage the .NET framework and make it more naturally programmable.

It was at this stage that I began to play around with Tiled. Tiled maps can be loaded by Monogame. Now, the problem with tiled is that is just one component and only lets me create maps. Meh! After playing with it I decided I hate it and may as well roll my own, something where the map design and rpg elements can (almost) seemlessly work together. I want to lay down triggers whilst editing character stats. I want to construct cliff faces and doorways - all in the same editor.

I took a couple long weekends to make an isometric rpg editor. And its full of bugs, no surprises there. The usability sucks, but at least I can roll my own decent GUI and get the whole vibe that I am going for, all whilst staying "modern". I achieved something quite basic:
http://imgur.com/a/BLHaT

Getting tiles that were made correctly is quite frustrating (actually, I now think most artists are *******!). It seems artists have no appreciation for consistency and will tend to layout an isometric tile in just about any random fashion. Multi tile assets are particularly mysterious to them. I trolled the internet for months (yes months!) looking for isometric art. I really lost my rag at this point.

However there was some hope! On OpenGameArt I found Denki. Denki is the exception, he makes his tiles consistently and so I've used those. Unfortunately the sets available are not really complete but I am using them for prototyping.

All in all its been frustrating and long journey with much time invested, JUST to reach this starting point (I really should be spending my weekends on my boat instead).

Strange enough I found rolling my own engine to be less annoying than using any of these commercial engines. I guess I like things a certain way, and it seems worth it to claw my way forward than put up with the compromises that would have to be made IF I had used a 3rd party engine.

I still have a hopelessly long way to go and lord knows how I will acquire the art I need. I suppose I will have to hire someone on the pixelation forum - no doubt I will get badly burned by that.

Whats disturbing to me, is that the more I reflect upon my efforts the greater I suspect this whole process...is NORMAL.
 
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Davaris

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Whats disturbing to me, is that the more I reflect upon my efforts the greater I suspect this whole process...is NORMAL.

Yep its normal. Art is unaffordable. Artists are weird. Using other people's libraries is like trying to swim through quicksand. If I got motivated, I would pay no tribute to the art gods. 2D only and just the game - see Dwarf Fortress or the early Ultimas.

If you hated Unity, take a look at the 2D part of Godot. I like how they think so far, but admittedly I've only read half the instructions. :lol:
 
Last edited:

gaussgunner

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iso rpgs are pretty difficult to make. Don't let that stop you, but expect to make a few shitty prototypes before you get anywhere. If you care about gameplay above all, just use crappy non-animated placeholder art. Consider using a simple 2D grid instead of iso at this stage. Or try modding.

Ultimately..... 2D iso rendering is a pain in the ass. It's all about draw order. Since you'll ultimately 3D render your character sprites, you might as well use a 3D engine (but not fucking Unity). Then you might as well do the whole environment in 3D as well. Just set the camera to iso ortho projection.
 
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iso rpgs are pretty difficult to make. Don't let that stop you, but expect to make a few shitty prototypes before you get anywhere. If you care about gameplay above all, just use crappy non-animated placeholder art. Consider using a simple 2D grid instead of iso at this stage. Or try modding.

Ultimately..... 2D iso rendering is a pain in the ass. It's all about draw order. Since you'll ultimately 3D render your character sprites, you might as well use a 3D engine (but not fucking Unity). Then you might as well do the whole environment in 3D as well. Just set the camera to iso ortho projection.

YES iso is a pain but its worth it. I have been going ok so far with the isometric aspects. I can laydown blocks and multiple heights and my sprites are depth sorted. Not perfect but it looks ok.

Theres something very important to me: I am going for that old school feel so I want hand drawn pixel isometric art. I feel that 3D imitating 2D iso loses that old school feel. I want to keep everything 2D as it used to be.

Whats REALLY been giving me grief is the UI. I was hand rolling my own but, I'm just not happy with it. Theres too much functionality I need. UI's suck and UI's in monogame suck.
 

Mustawd

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Ultimately..... 2D iso rendering is a pain in the ass. It's all about draw order.

Wait what?

Really, for isometric I think the main two methods would be:

1. rendering basic shapes in 3d, rendering to an image, and then painting over digitally. This allows you to get the basic isometric shape of said object, which is much harder to do consistently if you're doing it free hand.

2. Make the model and texture it in the 3d program before rendering.

Each has its own pros and cons and distinct look.
 

shihonage

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YES iso is a pain but its worth it. I have been going ok so far with the isometric aspects. I can laydown blocks and multiple heights and my sprites are depth sorted. Not perfect but it looks ok.

Can you depth-sort multi-tile iso sprites? I did figure it out in the end, but it was an enormous bitch. If you run into a wall, I could probably explain it to you... once I read the code again and remember how I did it.

... recursion was involved.

Whats REALLY been giving me grief is the UI. I was hand rolling my own but, I'm just not happy with it. Theres too much functionality I need. UI's suck and UI's in monogame suck.

Tru dat.
 
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Can you depth-sort multi-tile iso sprites? I did figure it out in the end, but it was an enormous bitch. If you run into a wall, I could probably explain it to you... once I read the code again and remember how I did it.

... recursion was involved.

No - nothing that advanced I'm afraid...I actually don't do anything so complex. My approach is quite simple.

Basically I have tile layers where I can stack my tiles up on each other if neccessary so that each level has a height that when sorted the upper tiles have the same Z as the lower tiles.

Multi-tile assets would then be stacked accordingly. So a building that was 6 tiles, 3 for the ground and 3 for the base would be laid out so that the roof on a would go onto the 2nd level and so on...

Seems to work ok so far but I may be missing a trick or two as I haven't started developing yet, still working on the editor and UI (f****d!)
 

gaussgunner

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Theres something very important to me: I am going for that old school feel so I want hand drawn pixel isometric art. I feel that 3D imitating 2D iso loses that old school feel. I want to keep everything 2D as it used to be.

Whats REALLY been giving me grief is the UI. I was hand rolling my own but, I'm just not happy with it. Theres too much functionality I need. UI's suck and UI's in monogame suck.

Sure, if you're prepared to hand-draw each character sprite facing 4 or 8 directions * 8 animation steps each (16+ if you don't want it to look jerky). A good artist could probably crank out 4 a day in Blender. Even I, a noob, can make one in a day. Recognizable hand-drawn sprites are a lot more work, and it's the same goddamn thing over and over.

You could mix 3D sprites and hand-drawn tiles. That approach dates back to Diablo at least. Or you could 3D render sprites in realtime on a 2D background. It worked for Eternity, even if the game is shit in every other regard.

Have you heard of IMGUI? Immediate Mode GUI - it's a method for rolling your own GUI without an extra layer of data structures. Basically you define functions to draw each type of graphic element - text, wrapped text, image, button, dialog, etc - and anything clickable returns a different value if it was clicked since the last draw cycle.
 
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Sure, if you're prepared to hand-draw each character sprite facing 4 or 8 directions * 8 animation steps each (16+ if you don't want it to look jerky). A good artist could probably crank out 4 a day in Blender. Even I, a noob, can make one in a day. Recognizable hand-drawn sprites are a lot more work, and it's the same goddamn thing over and over.

You could mix 3D sprites and hand-drawn tiles. That approach dates back to Diablo at least. Or you could 3D render sprites in realtime on a 2D background. It worked for Eternity, even if the game is shit in every other regard.

Have you heard of IMGUI? Immediate Mode GUI - it's a method for rolling your own GUI without an extra layer of data structures. Basically you define functions to draw each type of graphic element - text, wrapped text, image, button, dialog, etc - and anything clickable returns a different value if it was clicked since the last draw cycle.

If I used 3D I would only need one skeleton that was animated and then can rig up all the 3D character models and render out to 2D. YES that would be easiest and I won't rule it out however...I will only do this if it can look authentically 2.5D. 2D skeletons and rigs are also possible although I don't know how easy that approach is. What for certain is that I will have to hire a pixel artist to do the tiles. As for the animations I will have to see how much it will cost and possibly reuse models that are coloured in differently.
 

gaussgunner

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If I used 3D I would only need one skeleton that was animated and then can rig up all the 3D character models and render out to 2D. YES that would be easiest and I won't rule it out however...I will only do this if it can look authentically 2.5D. 2D skeletons and rigs are also possible although I don't know how easy that approach is. What for certain is that I will have to hire a pixel artist to do the tiles. As for the animations I will have to see how much it will cost and possibly reuse models that are coloured in differently.

I work with rigged 2D vector models a lot. It's like 3D but more limited, mostly due to draw order issues once again. Looks kinda like anime. Being able to change weapons/armor/colors kinda makes it worthwhile.

Rigged 2D bitmapped sprites are pretty simple but even more limited. You see them in shitty Flash games.
 
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Excidium II

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I would never make an iso CRPG tbh. Very little is lost from going a more abstract top down unless you really do have some high quality assets.
 

MrRichard999

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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
Try one of the Lunatic Dawn games in English :)

Where might I get one of these games in English?

Book of Futures and Passages of the Book are in English through translation projects. Passages of the book is on Steam and Book of Futures you have to "search" for the iso. The English files can be download at www.romhacking.net.

With the steam game I would wait till its on sale, which they have for it often.
 

BlackGoat

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The thought of drawing things 8 times just so you can have a sprite facing in each direction seems so exhausting why bother. Make your game. If it's good it'll be good regardless of how many directions the main character faces
 
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The thought of drawing things 8 times just so you can have a sprite facing in each direction seems so exhausting why bother. Make your game. If it's good it'll be good regardless of how many directions the main character faces

That is one philosophy which I sort of buy into but there needs to be some standards or people will get turned off.

I might just go with two directions. Its all budget dependent.
 

shihonage

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If you need placeholders... There are sprite extractors for Fallout:Tactics, aka the most detailed/animated 2D isometric game in existence. They fit standard isometric grid perfectly. If you need placeholder graphics, you can start with those. Though they are made for 800x600 resolution, and you may need to run a mass-dirty upscale (without smoothing) in Irfanview or something, if you want to have them bigger. They will look like shit upscaled though.

Oh and you obviously can't distribute them with your project.
 

gaussgunner

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The thought of drawing things 8 times just so you can have a sprite facing in each direction seems so exhausting why bother. Make your game. If it's good it'll be good regardless of how many directions the main character faces

That is one philosophy which I sort of buy into but there needs to be some standards or people will get turned off.

I might just go with two directions. Its all budget dependent.

That's exactly what I'm doing for now. I've tested 8-way 3D rendered sprites, I can always do that later, but gameplay comes first.
 

Mustawd

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That's tiled prerendered 3d. Much like Fallout.

Personally, I think it looks good, if a bit boring as most of the environment is wilderness.
 

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