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Old school Isometric RPG hardship

Mustawd

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I'm assuming the approach used by Blizzard here is far harder to reproduce than even the IE games?


I think it's less about difficulty of making isometric scenes and more about the fact that they had to make a seamless tileset for each level. Since each level is randomly generated, they can't just rely on one "shot" of a scene like IE games or ToEE.

So yah, I'd say the difficulty level is a bit higher as you need to make sure everything can fit together well, and that an algorithm is produced so that a map level doesn't look like crap.

It's the animations. Everything seems animated, and there are so many frames to each one. It's like comparing the Fleischer cartoons to Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Are you talking about stuff like loot stashes and lit torches? (see example below)



Not sure if it's a difficulty thing, and probably more of a style thing, as IE games had similar effects (see torches on wall of vid below)




Must be so hard to do. IE has been hacked to pieces, and nobody has ever made much of the engine from Diablo 2, to my knowledge.

Well if originality wasn't an issue anyone could theoretically take the Diablo 2 tilesets and make any kind of isometric game they wanted. Adventure, RPG, Strategy (commandos-like), etc.

Anyhow, it's not like a lot of quality IE mods exist with new maps created by modders.
 
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My tileset is going very slowly. I have 10 tiles. My last artist just couldn't grasp the concept and nothing fit together so I am trying another artist.
lol, hire me when you run out of other artists

set I did in 2 evenings
2F0r1u3.png

it's about 80 tiles (not all included in picture), except plants that were downloaded from web for quick testing purpose
hand painted test (from what I see max 1h/tile)
5KONS2I.png

more testing
Koh44rQ.png

some more prerendered pictures
http://imgur.com/a/ub3Hl
oCgLUxj.png


Fallout assets
http://imgur.com/a/2Uq5D
kGHRNmJ.png

large handpainted stuff:
1Eb0veX.jpg

I did a lot of those, but my old laptop is broken beyond repair and I'm too dumb to upload shit regulary.

new one:
D0wHGpj.png

crappy trees
LA8V1Yp.png

I'm going to try to make entire tileset now.
:negative:
To be fair, the amount of tiles in that game is just huge. Not sure if it's feasible to recreate that on a budget.
You can use layers of tiles and instead 100 tiles you can render 20 basic grass tiles and 20 additional elements. On the other hand small elements looks better when they are part of tile so probably not the best solution for realistic tilesets with smooth shadows. If you want to use png files with alpha channel it might look nice. The same with walls, you can make basic set and then decals with scratches, stains, cracks like wallpapers and goo in Fallout.

Beautiful artwork. I doubt I could afford your expertise however your advice made me question my current approach.

My current approach is to just use simple tiles for now with the exception of ground tiles that can be layered. Once this set of 80 is complete (I will post it up here) and I will try to make another set of 80 taking the approach of more detailed layering.

As far as shadows go I am not yet decided. I may try to write (very simple) shadows into the engine along with lighting.
 
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supervoid

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My work in progress portfolio tileset:
s0Tmg6V.png

I4B4tge.png

1amEVSS.png

6iEyHM4.png

AKGvPhz.png

vvsiVoD.png

sYz6Jh3.png

9LwzO6Y.gif
NgmMVST.gif
I think I'll finish it when I have free time and then make some small desert, snow and cave sets. Then learn how to effciently model and animate characters.
 
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supervoid

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These look great man. You should write a tutorial for these. Seriously.
It's very basic stuff, like make seamless texture, render it in top down perspective, upload in the Tiled and polish untill it looks good.
I learned 3d for scenery from Youtube tutorials, there's everything you need, and you don't have to make is as detailed and realistic as in tutorials because resolution is low.
Technical basics:
Textures:

Filters->Map->Make Seamless in Gimp
Some patterns in Filters->Render have seamless options
Noise for uniform textures or variation for other textures
Clone Tool and brush, also various colour options, layers modes etc.
I can't really give you step by step on how to make texture, every one is different. A lot of photos from CGtextures.com is nice enough to use without too much tweaking.

Rendering tile in blender:
http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2015/11/20/Creating-Isometric-Tiles-in-Blender.aspx
Stop on the step when you have flat tile in camera region. Use Cycles and your texture with Emmision shader set to 1. You can ignore lights etc. because this is giving you your texture in correct perspective. Render it twice as big as your tile and then downsize, it usually looks better this way.
You could just rotate your texture by 45 degrees and then resize to tile's size, but it's going to be a bit blurry.

Making tile:
Grab some tile template from internet (recolor it to some bright coloursif you want), open it in Gimp, paste your rendered graphic in the layer on top. You can copy and merge your tile a couple of times so transparent pixels on the edges become less transparent. Select areas outisde the tile on the template, then delete them from tile. Then fill empety pixels on the edge of tile following your template. I'm using Pencil tool and pick some random colours from tile. Also paint over the too bright and too dark pixels on the edges. Save as png.
Upload your tile to the Tiled. http://www.mapeditor.org/ Use it on the map, if it has ugly parts go to your file in Gimp, use brush and clone tool to polish your graphics, then reload tile in Tiled.

Transition tiles:
You can make transition texture and repeat other steps. For simple textures open two tiles in the layers in Gimp, then use layer mask on top one and mask half of it. You can mask middle of it or make some scratches and patches.

Scenery:
https://www.youtube.com/user/AndrewPPrice
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG8AxMVa6eutIGxrdnDxWpQ
iirc they have some easy nature and rock tutorials. For more compicated stuff you need to learn Blender or follow some other tutorials.
Render in Cycles with the same camera as tile and simple lamp setup, even only sun lamp in the angle that produce short shadow. Then edit and overpaint in Gimp or other program. Try to render it in the size you need or twice as big, if you resize it by hand it will be blurred an full of artifacts.

Walls:
Make or download template and use it as background image in Blender, then either build it from 3d objects (planks, bricks) or just make vertical plane and render texture like in the case of tile. if you are making it from 3d objects copy your rendered picture layer on top of template and delete area outside wall. Also you need to experiment with lights, like using horizontal lamps perpendicular to wall's surface. Overpaint it a bit, tweak colours and levels. Check in Tiled and edit.

It's a matter of practice, like with drawings. Also I can paint on semi-professional level so it probabaly helps with colours and such.
 
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*snip*

Whats disturbing to me, is that the more I reflect upon my efforts the greater I suspect this whole process...is NORMAL.
Its normal. The vast majority programmers want or wanted to make a game and thought it would be easy at first. For a few rare birds it's "easy", but most of us I think it turns out a major head scratcher and obstacle course. For every successful game, therer're hundreds or thousands of "stillborns." And most will tell you even the greatest game makers went through prototypes--albeit not the same thing really.
 
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Ok so, its been a few months and I've tried hiring a couple artists. About $1000 later some lessons have been learned.

I had so many applications and most of course were not up to scratch, several did seem ok.

The first artist was a 3rd worlder with a smart portfolio but he was a money grubber and kept asking for money and telling sob stories of his sick children and this really didn't sit right with me.
Also he was hopeless at understanding isometric and produced a dozen or so unusable tiles. I thanked him and paid him and said I would park it there.

I decided to try a european artist and he was a hard worker and very helpful and professional and he never asked for pay until he actually completed the set, however his style was really cutesy and I just couldn't bear to proceed in this style so I thanked him and paid him and said I'll maybe be in touch.

I then took some time off the art and decided to focus on the game engine side and then try my hand and making art myself. That's where I am now. I'm actually a lot happier now and have been making some progress with my own art and I will probably stick with it for a while.
 
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Movement between inside and outside doesn't ruin combat, IMO. It just means a house or building is not a combat area

Aka it restricts where you can initiate combat, thus restricting gameplay opportunities.

What if an NPC you attack would follow you inside/outside, provided the door is not suddenly locked. Would this compromise be acceptable?
If I have interiors without level switching then I have to make roofs cutaway which will probably be a pain.
 

shihonage

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Movement between inside and outside doesn't ruin combat, IMO. It just means a house or building is not a combat area

Aka it restricts where you can initiate combat, thus restricting gameplay opportunities.

What if an NPC you attack would follow you inside/outside, provided the door is not suddenly locked. Would this compromise be acceptable?
If I have interiors without level switching then I have to make roofs cutaway which will probably be a pain.

That's why you have to have houses made of separate wall and roof tiles, so you can "cut them away" programmatically. In the end it's gonna be less pain than doing weird tricks to stitch together an illusion of level continuity.
 
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Movement between inside and outside doesn't ruin combat, IMO. It just means a house or building is not a combat area

Aka it restricts where you can initiate combat, thus restricting gameplay opportunities.

What if an NPC you attack would follow you inside/outside, provided the door is not suddenly locked. Would this compromise be acceptable?
If I have interiors without level switching then I have to make roofs cutaway which will probably be a pain.

That's why you have to have houses made of separate wall and roof tiles, so you can "cut them away" programmatically. In the end it's gonna be less pain than doing weird tricks to stitch together an illusion of level continuity.

I'm actually going for a combination of tiles and predrawn. So maybe possible in some cases.
 
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Movement between inside and outside doesn't ruin combat, IMO. It just means a house or building is not a combat area

Aka it restricts where you can initiate combat, thus restricting gameplay opportunities.

What if an NPC you attack would follow you inside/outside, provided the door is not suddenly locked. Would this compromise be acceptable?
If I have interiors without level switching then I have to make roofs cutaway which will probably be a pain.

That's why you have to have houses made of separate wall and roof tiles, so you can "cut them away" programmatically. In the end it's gonna be less pain than doing weird tricks to stitch together an illusion of level continuity.

How in hell do I make a modular isometric roof - looking somewhat good? I'm really not sure. Ok so I could cop out and do flat roofs but if I want a proper slanty roof I'm not sure how to make that modular.
 

shihonage

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How in hell do I make a modular isometric roof - looking somewhat good? I'm really not sure. Ok so I could cop out and do flat roofs but if I want a proper slanty roof I'm not sure how to make that modular

It would have to be non-modular, and serve as a giant prop on top of the house that fades out when you enter it. Though I haven't experimented with this idea.
 
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supervoid

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How in hell do I make a modular isometric roof - looking somewhat good? I'm really not sure. Ok so I could cop out and do flat roofs but if I want a proper slanty roof I'm not sure how to make that modular.

This one is just one big roof tile that disappears when character enters a building, triangle wooden element in the front is part of a tile:
EhsnVJF.png


This (unfinished) one is made out of tiles:
vvsiVoD.png

You need a specific angle of slope or else edge won't tile. You need about 15 tiles for one direction of the roof (N-S or E-W). For both directions and transitions probably about 35 tiles, (let's say $5 each, slate patterns are time-consuming). For the simplest flat roof, you need 9 tiles.

Which one is better option depends on your game. If it's small game with limited number of buildings, and you don't mind many buildings in the same size and shape, using one big roof graphic could be cheaper/faster, if game is big and you want a lot of buildings in different sizes and shapes, separate tiles are better.

It would have to be non-modular, and serve as a giant prop on top of the house that fades out when you enter it. Though I haven't experimented with this idea.
Fonline does it, but it needs normal small tiles underneath big roof graphic.
 
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I had a crack at this today its tricky getting the roof offsets to work. Nearly there actually.

bE8Q7

https://imgur.com/a/bE8Q7
Is this image coming through?

Just trying to figure out alignments. Of course roofs can get far more complex than these so I need to create some T sections.

bE8Q7

The tiles are more placeholders for the moment I will get the shapes correct and then I will pretty them up and augment them with some facades.

BTW I'm using Tiled...not sure how to display all layers not darkened at once.
 
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supervoid

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Just trying to figure out alignments. Of course roofs can get far more complex than these so I need to create some T sections.
Looks good, I'd cut it in different way (along the grid lines), but if it works for you it's ok.
 
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Just trying to figure out alignments. Of course roofs can get far more complex than these so I need to create some T sections.
Looks good, I'd cut it in different way (along the grid lines), but if it works for you it's ok.

Yeah I'm really not sure how to move forward. Part of the problem is wall to roof alignment. More complex roofs mean some mis-alignments. For simple roofs as above its fine but if I'm making a really grand house with cross sections things are off by 1/2 foot or so on corners. Its a bit of a trade off between making 4 wall tiles and 8 wall tiles. Corner walls would make things fit better but its more work. I'll probably just keep riffing with this and see how nice it can be made to look.

My other concern is that the buildings might look a bit stiff. Not have the natural look, there needs to be some imperfections and irregularities. Maybe a crumbling or crooked wall or roof might help.
 
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Also not sure how to handle hills and varying terrain heights, ouch that could get tricky.
More so from the character movement code that would have to figure out what height to be at.
 

gaussgunner

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Indeed it is tricky. I've implemented variable height terrain in my engine, but it still needs work on grid display and tile picking, and it's hardly essential. If in doubt don't do it.
 

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