[CF-Devel] How to make a iso game or its not so hard baby!

[Michael Toennies]

And again the iso knight is fighting for his eyes.

Because there are still some out, which are not my believers, i
must go to convert them.

Well, this time we start with the Map Editor of a game called
Age of Wonders. (Hey MiDS, this game is coded from a team from
netherlands, nice guys, i icq them one time).

AoW uses so called 6 side hexagons as tiles, short hex called.
As you notice in difference to Age of Empires, this tiles are nearly
rectangles
or better they are rounded rectangles.

The use of 45° tiles like A of Empire i posted before is gfx design only.

The only reason to use hexes is for map design and position. You had a
native
path to north east and north west for example. They comes from table top
games
before there are a computer out.

But what is the use of hexes? Well, in a table top game, the LENGTH of
effects are often
calculated by using a folding rule, calculating every mm. But when you use
rectangles
for this, 3 tiles south east are a longer line in mm then 3 tiles north.
Well, the diagonal
length of a rectangle for nw point to se point is more in length than the
length of a side
(when all sides have same length). You will this remember from school. So
they use hexes and as you
can see, when you do it right, the length now is nearly the same!

But hexes has a big drawback! You can't move direct east or west! But
remember the table top where
they come from. The figures are set by hand, so you see no moving and the
length is what they need.

Well, on computer, this makes not the big sense in many cases, but you got a
nice moving system
and you can add the iso game gfx with them so they got used.


Here is the first demo picture. Is the map editor of AoW in use. Notice the
big 7 part hex
in the map area. Filling an area means always filling this area.

I just fill the map with same background. ONE background tile. The program
automatically fill
the same background to the area and add then some nearly same tiles in
random. So you got this
picture.

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/newsnap1.png
     
     

Again, there are hidden perspective lines in the picture...

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/newsnap1b.png
     
     


Well, you will notice that this look absoluty like Age of Empire...
Its not the name, its the gfx guys. :)

Here we add a nearly FLAT monster piucture.

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/newsnap2.png
     
     

AoW had only one direction monsters look in editor, so they look south east.
But notice they are flat, except they are *slightly* not flat, to avoid
bad lines. Also, they are volume inside of them, lets looks them
plastically.

Well, this is NOTHING you can to with rectangels. This is pure CF gfx we can
include.

Ok, and know we DESTROY the iso game gfx. Means we kill the eye fooling
system.
Sadly AoW has no walls or something, but you can drop streets.
So i use street as walls of houses. Think this is a house...
A bad, eye killing house...

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/newsnap3.png
     
     

As you can see, this destroys the iso game gfx effect.

THATS WHY OUR CF XPM GFX AND THE FLAT PNG GFX LOOKS SO FLAT.

But how one can avoid this?

** ITS ONLY A QUESTION OF MAP DESIGN **

Well, here it is... Enjoy the great picture with THE SAME GFX ELEMENTS!

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/newsnap4.png
     
     

Stunning, isn't it?

Thats the easiest trick: Avoid perspective destroying rectange structures.

If you think about it, there is a problem to draw a wall from north west to
south east. Because the edge only attach at ONE pixel!
So, how we get a bigger wall like in the picture before?

Its simple: Let a wall layer object which runs from north west to south east
adding some pixel to the south east area. Or let them attach side to side.
Look at this demo picture to see the system.

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/newsnap5.png
     
     

The areas with NO means, you can't move in this tile. The ???? marks the
problem
when you attach on side... you have to set the upper tile to no move,
because you
will cross the wall when you dont do it.

Well, but there are other ways.

REMEMBER: THE TRICK IS TO FOOL THE EYE; NOT TO USE HEX OR DIAMOND SHAPE ARE
OTHER TILE
FORMATS.

This is from a rogue like game i found. I rip the demo pictures off. btw,
the game of
this gfx never shows more than this gfx and some code... its dead.

     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/scrs0000.gif
     
     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/scrs0002.gif
     
     
     http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/isodemo/scrs0003.gif
     
     

Well, i don't say to copy this, but it shows whats possible.

Well, when you look at the AoW demo pictures, you will notice that they
do some really simple stuff:

5 different floors (wasteland, grass, etc.). 21 standard objects like trees,
stones etc. for each kind of background. Thats all.

To this, about 25-50 bigger objects.

Plus some maskings as layer between this (look at the sea in the pictures in
the south).

Well, the AoW maps are really nice and impressive. If you see them you got
the feeling for
much more gfx.

Its NOT so hard.