Quick question: does anyone know of any GOOD isometric engine available out there??

Something I can get the looks of a Zelda game, or a X-Com game. Perhaps even hexagonal?

Thanks

try google...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=isometric+game+engine

I did that already. However, I was wondering if there is a "recommended" isometric engine. Thus I posted this message...

My recommendation would be to build one with PTK (http://www.phelios.com/ptk)!

here, I picked the 3rd link off the google search for ya...

http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/isomaker.htm

the problem is, this is a very novice question. It shows you haven’t spent much time thinking or looking at the different engines. If you had you might have narrowed it down to one or two engines and maybe posted asking if people had experience with either and what their thoughts were.

The fact is, there is no recommended anything, you'll find a re-occurring theme in indie game development, what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. This is true from the marketing side all the way down to the technical side.

You need to find what works for you, there is no "silver bullet" that will open the doors of indie game success, you gotta do the work yourself and then ask questions. Not the other way around.

When people see you've spent some time thinking about your question and doing a little research before asking, they will be much more receptive and willing to answer your questions.

Yeah...I agree with you. I was a bit too abstract with my question. Perhaps it was because I was trying to do a bit of a survery on isometric engines.

I've already took a brief look in some engines I found on google, and I guess I pretty much narrowed down what I should do, which is develop a small isometric engine of my own (since the game I have planned is not that complex).

However, I was checking to see if any of you, who have more experience in developing games, have any tip on a good engine out there.

So...I will try not to be too basic next time.

Well at least I understood where you were coming from. Unfortunately isometric engines are just a very narrow public field out there (in here?).

I suspect if you had asked the very same question for 3D engines as opposed to isometic, you would have probably gotten a very lengthy response from a number of experienced and opinionated individuals-- with perhaps a number of others (who likely would have chosen to remain silent) pondering why people always have to ask about "a good 3D engine" all the time.

I see little wrong with asking, particuarly when it comes to somewhat uncommon things like pre-built isometric engines because, you know, Google isn't always perfect. There have been a number of times when people have pointed me to useful obscure websites that would otherwise be very difficult to pull up in a google search result.

if you're just going for the isometric look (and a bit of picking game objects with the mouse and so on) i'd say just develop your own with SDL or something, it's not really different from doing orthogonal tiles.

OTOH if you have a RTS or similar game in mind you really should look into things like multiple layers, line of sight calc., collision detction, a map file format, 3D acceleration, ...


here are a few links to get started:

http://www.isometrix.org
http://retrospec.sgn.net/retrotools.php
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp?forum_id=13

haze

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maybe we could add a small section on isometric stuff to a FAQ for this forum (along with pointers to 3D engine vendors and other common questions while we're at it) ?

the problem is, this is a very novice question.

That's not the way I would view it. Novice in what regard? And isn't pursuing knowledge on boards like this just part of the process? Isn't that one of the reasons why these boards exist?

It shows you haven’t spent much time thinking or looking at the different engines.

That's part of the problem, there simply aren't that many Isometric Engines around, hence the question.

Quick question: does anyone know of any GOOD isometric engine available out there??

I've recently been on the look out for tools/technology on making an Isometric game and IMHO there are simply no viable Iso editors/engines around. I downloaded several, of which the names escape me (but I think "Isoworld" was one), but none of them worked (either they crashed within minutes or didn't install properly).

(And for the record, finding these tools through google wasn't easy, so I certainly don't fault anyone for asking about them on a forum)

My adivce would be to roll your own. Even if you did find something off the net it probably wouldn't come with any level of support.

Something I can get the looks of a Zelda game...

Just a small nickpick, but Zelda is top-down, not isometric (well, at least the old Zeldas are, except Zelda 2).

If you are looking for technology in making a top-down view game then you may have more luck. I certainly found more map editors for top-down and side-scrolling views.

Good luck.

That's not the way I would view it. Novice in what regard? And isn't pursuing knowledge on boards like this just part of the process? Isn't that one of the reasons why these boards exist?


The reason these boards exist is to be a resource for business minded (entrepreneurial) indie developers who are growing their existing business or planning on starting one.

There are plenty of other resources around the web for people to become acquainted with game development technologies... gamedev.net has an
Isometric Land (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp?forum_id=13) forum that is dedicated entirely to questions of this sort and is moderated by individuals who have experience in this area.

That is the primary reason for gamedev.net's existence, to help aspiring game programmers make games. Where as this forums serves to be a resource for the business aspects of game development.

That is the primary reason for gamedev.net's existence, to help aspiring game programmers make games. Where as this forums serves to be a resource for the business aspects of game development.

Then can you please rename the Game Development & Technical forum to Not Game Development & Technical?

This has to be the worst post I have read in this forum to this date.

One of the problems here is the forum topic is very general, especially for new members. In fact every post on the dexterity forums could be considered related to "Game Development" ...

One of my responsibilities as a moderator is to help preserve the value of the forums, this means balancing out the signal to noise ratio. In recent months the amount of "noise" has been on the increase.

Nothing against you personally moonpixi, you just registered so you may not be familiar with the culture of these forums. When these forums were smaller a large portion of the members of these forums were established indie game developers, and game developers who were serious about making their hobby a business. There were a lot of enlightening discussions that were unique to these forums alone. As readership increased the forums became a lot more chatty, people spent less time thinking about their posts and considering how much value they added by posting. As this transition occurred many of the original members that made the forums unique in the first place began to stop posting.

I'm sure a lot of them still read, but the discussions and information shared on these forums now is very different then what was around in the first year of these forums.

So when I see a new user who's first post appears to be a question whose answer has been discussed in detail in other areas of the web. Not only that but his question appears to contain a fundamental miss-understanding of what "Isometric" perspective is, I feel it is my responsibility to moderate.

So each day when I browse the forums, I have to decide what crosses the line? What is “noisy” and what isn’t?

For example, if the game development and technical forums were full of threads like…

"how do I use a pointer?"
"Can someone give me an implementation of buble stort?"
"homework question: help me do my CSS101 homework!"
"Which game engine should i use? Torque or GDI?"

The only people who would benefit from posts like these would be novice programmers and people just learning game development. There are plenty of forums and communities around the web for these individuals. The dexterity forums used to be one of the only forums that catered to experienced indie developers. That’s not to say that novices and budding programmers are unwelcome here, just that when they post, the should consider the readership of the forum and what makes this forum valuable.

So I have to make a judgment call, what posts are going to be valuable to the target readership of these forums, and what aren’t? In this case I felt the question was not very insightful and any answers would have to first establish the concept of "Isometric" before beginning to talk about what engines were available. My reading of the inital post is that moonpixe is actually asking about tile engines in general, not specifically isometric. ( could be mistaken, but again as a moderator, I have to make judgment calls every day)

In this case, I felt the post was a little too noisy.

First of all, I didn't intend on making a fuss of all of these, and was probably mistaken by the generality of this forum, in particular. My intention was to gather a bit of information, from indie developers, on isometric engines (and yes, tile engines as I stand corrected).

From being/trying to be a indie myself, I though that, perhaps, asking to a crowd with nearby interests and goals would result in answers more apropriate to this environemnt. Now I notice, I should have also asked:
- Do isometric engines and games have appeal on casual gamers?
- Are there any current indie examples of isometric games, specially turn-based? There is Laser Squad Nemesis (http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com/), but I guess the focus is a bit different.
- Wargames (isometric or not) have market appeal?

Next time I will try to be less of a newbie, and more of an acomplished indie, since I enjoy the discussion on the "Indie business" forum, and I am willing to make part of it, sucessful or not. And if you want, you can freely close this thread, since I've already got all the answers I need it.

moonpixi, no hard feelings, I'll fess up to overreacting a little bit at first. Should't post when I’m frustrated :)

Here's a couple of sites that make strategy type games

http://www.nbsd.de/ (pax solaris + more)
http://www.galciv.com/index.asp <- was developed indie, then published with strategy first. I think it became SF's best seller.
http://digital-eel.com/sais/ (Strange adventures in infinite space)
http://www.positech.co.uk/ (starlines inc, and starship tycoon)

These games are more of the 4x strategy genera; pax solaris is probably closer to a real time strategy game. A friend of mine is developing a "zelda" perspective multiplayer strategy game. I uses flash for the display, and a C++ back end for the multiplayer networking etc.

I personally think there's a good market for real time / turn based strategy games. The casual game, puzzle game market has been a good cash cow as of late, I think some of those players would be willing to move to the next layer of problem solving, multiplayer strategy games...

Hey...no problem!! I really posted a very basic question!!!

I was first thinking of joining the puzzle game bandwagon, but soon noticed (through this forums) that the market, while making a pretty good cash, is a bit overloaded.

Anyway, my idea is more or less like this: the game is part browser based and part turn based combat. Browser games are simple, both to make them as to play them, and already have some following (here you can check a few of them: http://www.mpogd.com/). The experience of playing them can be quite restricted (although some are also quite addicting). Thus, the main idea is to enhance the game with turn-based combat, which can be quite fun.

Thus, in the browser game would deal with managing your equipment, troops, etc; researching, and stuff like that. The action, would take place in a special module, in turn based combat.

Not sure if this is actually a good idea, but I will try to find out soon.

One of my responsibilities as a moderator is to help preserve the value of the forums, this means balancing out the signal to noise ratio. In recent months the amount of "noise" has been on the increase.


Working towards keeping the quality of this forum high is of course to everyone's best interest, and this certainly is a forum of an entirely different calibre than for example gamedev.net. But one fact is hard to avoid: as anything grows - doesn't matter if it is a forum, a company or a democracy - the size itself is going to work against it. I, along with many others for sure, have seen numerous vigilant attempts by moderators in various boards to reduce noise at some arbitrary boarder such as in this example "too general technical question". But even in boards with clear rules and a list of answered questions that are not allowed to reoccur the noise will increase as more and more members join. And how many posts have we all seen of the kind "someone asks question, someone else informs that the question should not be asked, someone else again ... etc"? That is certainly a lot more noise than the question itself.

If you want to moderate, why not make some clear rules? How about whenever someone asks an answered question a moderator links to the faq and closes the thread with a helpful comment? A closed thread with no more content than one question and the reply that the question is in the faq is the best possible way to educate new people about how things work.

Anyway, I am sure these forums will keep being a great resource also in the future. I can't speak for the past because I am a fairly new member, but it's still one of the few places where good discussions can and does happen.

Check out Kyra: http://www.grinninglizard.com/kyra/index.html

Last time I looked at it, it was still in early development (check out http://freepop.sf.net for the reason why it exists). Apparently it has been greatly enhanced since the last time I saw it.

Licensing: It is under the GPL if you simply include it, but it is also under the LGPL so long as you include a Kyra splash screen in your project, meaning that you don't have to release your code under the same license so long as you dynamically link to it.

That's part of the problem, there simply aren't that many Isometric Engines around, hence the question.
There's no such thing as an Isometric Engine!

Really, my draw the screen routine has about 10 lines of code to draw the background and a sort function to sort the sprites before printing them. It should take about 8 hours to make your own.....

There's no such thing as an Isometric Engine!

Really, my draw the screen routine has about 10 lines of code to draw the background and a sort function to sort the sprites before printing them. It should take about 8 hours to make your own.....

But of course. I'm sure we all can write pixels to the screen with confidence (I for one am a game programmer in "real life", it's my day job).

But I think there is considerably overlap amoung many Isometric games to be put into an 'engine' of some sort. For my own development, I was looking for an Isometric map editor, something I was surprised to have difficulty in finding.

I agree with the final assessment, that the OP should roll his own engine, but I can't fault him for searching for a pre-made solution. It's not like any of us re-write the Window's API from scratch everytime we write a Win32 application.

I rolled my own isometric engine, but it's in java and intended for mobile devices. It was no simple task though, I spent a good two months on the editor and client renderer.

If you're gonna go that route and roll your own, just drop me an email with any questions.

You can see pics of the editor and movies here:

http://orbisstudios.com/desolo/screenshots