isometric movement

[Random]

I consider the default animation system quite quirky and prefer to have total control with a custom movement.

Combining the top down map with a map editor is not impossible. If you can actually pull off the editor, I don't think it would be a lot harder.
Making a nice editor in the first place can be tricky though.

Besides, unless you go 45° or top-down, you can't use the 8-dir movement anyway, so it's either that or a custom movement..

[dascribe]

I got the character doing a 5/3 and 3/2 x,y.
that part worked fine.
rigged the combined arrow keys so it does not go all over
but the next problem is how to control the speed
if you use anything over "every 1/100 secs," the animation gets choppy.
also doesn't level room to control the speed of the characters.

I was looking at the vector object.
Not sure how that works though.
Also considering the bounce.

I've built psuedo editors before, so it won't be that bad. Finding a way to make the data show up on a server and place the objects in realish time, that will be bad

[Random]

First of all use "Always" instead of "every 1/100 secs". You'll want to use "every" events as few as possible (they stack up if the application lags) and instead use "restrict action for x seconds" or, well, "Always", which is once per frame.

To move the character slower, store it's x and y position in it's alterable values, as floating point values. Then you can add 0.5/0.3 or whatever you like. Then always set the x and y position to those alterable values. Congratulations. Your first custom movement :P

I wouldn't use the vector movement here, although it's a very useful one that you should examine some time.

A server? Good luck..

[dascribe]

Got the movement using bounce. Not the 5/3 like I wanted, but 3/2 I can adjust the art.
Also got the character to speed up when you hold down the ctrl.

This eliminated the need for every or always, which is key because I want speed to be a factor in the game.

We'll have to see how it works when I add non-walking moves.

Now, I'm trying to figure out whether or not to do 8 directions or just 4. 4 may be easier in the long run, but less flexible as well.

Thanks for all of your help Random.

[Random]

No problem. But I'm serious about using "always". If you go for the floating point variable approach, you can create much slower movements than ever possible with bouncing ball - and speeding up is just as easy - e.g.
add to x: 0.5 * speed_multiplier
add to y: 0.3 * speed_multiplier
player holding ctrl? > set speed_multiplier to 3
player not holding ctrl? > set speed_multiplier to 1
player walking through mud? > set speed_multiplier to 0.5

The downside of this approach is that you also need a custom solution for collisions. Which is where the topdown map would make things really easy - in this case it's not that easy. You'd have to use invisible detector objects around the player to check if he's running into a wall. Could get quite tedious when you start adding mobs or NPCs.

[JimJam]

I'm actually working on a similar isometric system.

The simplest solution I found was to just make a custom 360 degree sine/cosine movement. And for the y movement, just divide by 2. That will give you the isometric look, without complicating the math at all. That is, when you press up + right, you will actually move at 45 degrees, but appear to move at the altered isometric angle.

You don't actually want to mess with the angle the player moves at, because that would fundamentally be wrong. Just adjust the Y value to half.

I can post an example if you so wish.

[LB]

What about the isometric object?

[uprize]

I am working with isometric right now. It is frustrating at first, but once you get to learn about them you realise its actualyl very simple. isometric is typically a 2d square (for example), turned on its axis 45degrees and viewing from 30degrees above. this makes tiles 2:1 aspect ratio.

Now I am making an RTS game complete with grid pathfinding, walls, terrain editor that affects the surrounding tiles, etc so my project is becoming very complex. But you MUST use the isomertric extension to make a decent isometric game. Simply create an active marker object in the next x or y cell to where you want to go, and create a fastloop to move the item towards that object. You can do cool things with this extension too, such as snap it to a grid space, so that all your tiles will be automatically aligned, and things like that.

It is hard to explain in a post like this, but maybe one day soon I will post an example to demostrate this. For more info, check out the examples that come with the Iso object, they should be helpful

[nivram]

Sounds like you really have a grip on your project. Sounding good bigredron.

[uprize]

Sounds like you really have a grip on your project. Sounding good bigredron.

barely, it becomes hard once u cram so many complicated things together. I am hoping to start a project page on TDC and post some examples sometime in the next few weeks