Isometric Grid Object

[SUNCHIRP]

Hi,

Is there any tutorials / guides anywhere for this extension, I was considering utilising the OpenGL extension for a game I am currently designing, but I can only utilise static object files with ( no animated 3d meshes ), so I've decided to go with standard sprites on a isometric board.

Trouble is, I've no idea how to set up an isometric game board in MMF2Dev, should I just do this manually with 2d sprites, or is the Iso Grid extension better for this, and if so, is there any help out there for the extension, I'm still fairly new to MMF2Dev, and I'm currently finding it overwhelming that there is very little in the way of tutorial based learning for most of the bundled and bonus extensions, it's nice that they are documented mostly, just not how I can utilise these extensions in a realworld game situation.

Any help appreciated.

Regards.

[nivram]

Hi SUNCHIRP. Have you checked out the example files that came with the extension?

Marv

[SUNCHIRP]

Hi, nivram

Yes, I've had a look at the examples files, the game and editor, and it's nice that I've been able to pick them apart and try to figure out how they work in line with each other, and the results are great, I have also downloaded 'redhades' updated isometric engine project also, which has even more in depth examples, I just can't seem to figure out how after placing the iso object and defining a grid ( nothing happens thereafter visually onscreen ), how I then utilise the extension to build up an isometric world, and how I can then define thereafter a game object that can them move perfectly in the iso perspective ?

[nivram]

Well, for your world you can substitute your graphics for the example grahics in the editor. The extension will save your file as .iso from the editor, and load the .iso file. That is how I created my own world. You also may be better off creating your character as a single enity out side the iso enviroment and create an iso movement, I did that for Zoric, an open source game on my website. He moves in an iso type grid movement.

Brake you application into seperate thinking pieces.
1. Your character
2. Your world

Don't be afraid to use place holders for the character and graphics.

Marv

[uprize]

I use the ISO object all the time. Red Hades example is brilliant, it should teach you everything you need to know.

Firstly you need to set up the grid object and define the size, etc.
This is not graphical, so the easiest way to test to make sure you set up your object correctly is to start a fastloop and create an isometric tile for each position. Something like the following:

+ Start of frame
- Set grid origin to frame width/2,0 (sets the grid object to half way across the screen and at y pos 0)
- Set cell width to 64
- Set cell heigh to 32
- Set grid width to 20
- Set grid height to 20

+ Start of frame
- Start loop 'fill_y' number of cells high times

+ OnLoop 'fill_y'
- Start loop 'fill_x' nubmer of cells wide times

+ OnLoop 'fill_x'
- Create isometric tile
- Set X position to XofCell("Isometric Grid Object", LoopIndex("fill_x"),LoopIndex("fill_y"))
- Set Y position to YofCell("Isometric Grid Object", LoopIndex("fill_x"),LoopIndex("fill_y"))


Basically what that does is loops through each cell of the iso grid object and positions an isometric tile at each cell position (make sure your iso tile is the same shape and size as you defined the ISO grid at start). This will start you in the right direction as you just learned how to draw an object to a certain cell position. - Of course this is an example only and you will need to change values to what you want.