Hi Pete,
The isometric angle is high so that the characters are easier to view when close to a wall that is high (I don't have to shrink the walls.)
It is simply an orthographic camera which is rotated 45 degrees around the y axis and -45 degrees in the x-axis.
Since you are interested in helping out I'll let you know what my thoughts were on the layouts and designs of the rooms intended for the game.
It is a very simple game, as you may have noticed from playing it (did you try it?) Unlike most story based rpgs I am not interested in having specific rooms like 'kitchen' 'courtyard' 'bathroom/bedroom' etc etc. I am thinking more along the lines of a set of rooms which have the same look and feel (ie uniform/coherent) but which differ in their shape (for game play purposes) and their contents (ie skeletal remains, barrels, old shields, lumps of cloth and broken swords, bloodstains, worn tapestries fluttering in the breeze, torches on the walls) which are merely to reduce the repetitive nature of the gameplay.
In the current game there are 6 different rooms, although the contents in terms of monster and equipment vary in their availability in each room - although not totally random. I feel that the current types of rooms
( T Corridor, X Corridor, 4 way Room, Long Room with multiple exits, Long room with 1 exit, Broad room with multiple exits) are the minimum I'd like to include in the game.
I'd prefer to steer clear of 'single exit' rooms (the game is designed to only allow motion forwards into the dungeon not back to previously explored rooms - a bit like a Roguelike game).
I'd also like to have the rooms be fairly open to allow for a lot of movement, as well as to not have too many obstacles in the main play area, although around the boundary is okay. Most of the 'detail objects' (ie eye candy) should sit around the edge of the room or in out of the way places so that the player and the monsters have a large play area.
Out of interest Pete - where are you writing from, I don't really know what the time difference is between where we both are. I am in Melbourne, Australia and it is about 9:30pm right now.
Thanks for your assistance with this, it is greatly appreciated, very much.
Thanks,
Matt
EDIT - Making levels for this game of mine is pretty easy actually (the technical process). It simply requires minimum of 3 renders (or possibly 2). The first is the render of the scene, the second and third are renders of the scene with gradient texture applied (from rgb=0 to rgb=height of texture) using an orthographic camera projection from above with one of these renders having the entire scene rendered and the other having only the walkable regions rendered. To get an idea of how this works have a look in the tiles directory within the levels directory of the game folder.
The isometric angle is high so that the characters are easier to view when close to a wall that is high (I don't have to shrink the walls.)
It is simply an orthographic camera which is rotated 45 degrees around the y axis and -45 degrees in the x-axis.
Since you are interested in helping out I'll let you know what my thoughts were on the layouts and designs of the rooms intended for the game.
It is a very simple game, as you may have noticed from playing it (did you try it?) Unlike most story based rpgs I am not interested in having specific rooms like 'kitchen' 'courtyard' 'bathroom/bedroom' etc etc. I am thinking more along the lines of a set of rooms which have the same look and feel (ie uniform/coherent) but which differ in their shape (for game play purposes) and their contents (ie skeletal remains, barrels, old shields, lumps of cloth and broken swords, bloodstains, worn tapestries fluttering in the breeze, torches on the walls) which are merely to reduce the repetitive nature of the gameplay.
In the current game there are 6 different rooms, although the contents in terms of monster and equipment vary in their availability in each room - although not totally random. I feel that the current types of rooms
( T Corridor, X Corridor, 4 way Room, Long Room with multiple exits, Long room with 1 exit, Broad room with multiple exits) are the minimum I'd like to include in the game.
I'd prefer to steer clear of 'single exit' rooms (the game is designed to only allow motion forwards into the dungeon not back to previously explored rooms - a bit like a Roguelike game).
I'd also like to have the rooms be fairly open to allow for a lot of movement, as well as to not have too many obstacles in the main play area, although around the boundary is okay. Most of the 'detail objects' (ie eye candy) should sit around the edge of the room or in out of the way places so that the player and the monsters have a large play area.
Out of interest Pete - where are you writing from, I don't really know what the time difference is between where we both are. I am in Melbourne, Australia and it is about 9:30pm right now.
Thanks for your assistance with this, it is greatly appreciated, very much.
Thanks,
Matt
EDIT - Making levels for this game of mine is pretty easy actually (the technical process). It simply requires minimum of 3 renders (or possibly 2). The first is the render of the scene, the second and third are renders of the scene with gradient texture applied (from rgb=0 to rgb=height of texture) using an orthographic camera projection from above with one of these renders having the entire scene rendered and the other having only the walkable regions rendered. To get an idea of how this works have a look in the tiles directory within the levels directory of the game folder.