Deciding to back down after almost a year...

Alright, this 3d engine rendering engine thing, too much. I mean yeah sure, I have it all done except for the scene graph part, and the occlusion part, which I'm pretty sure are the biggest parts, but still. Too much work, not enough gratification.

I've decided I'm going to move down to try to make a 2d isometric tiling engine. I want it to be isometric because if done correctly it can look pretty good (see ultima online). What is the theory behind isometric tiling? Is it the same thing as normal 2d tiling only rotated 45 degrees? How should I handle storing maps, how should I handle painting the map with textures? How should I handle drawing the map? How should I handle collision, occlusion, drawing only what we can see, etc etc etc... The list goes on..

I know a couple people here on these forums know a plethora of information regarding these topics, can anyone help?

There are a lot of articles out there on iso-tile engines. It's probably ebst to read first rather than asking for someone to explain everything.

If you would like to help as part of a team I am actively recruiting programmers to finish a series of 2D RPG like games. They are not isometric as of this version, but that is not to say future versions won't be.

It takes a lot of guts to admit when you are over your head and I admire that more than any amount of programming knowledge a person has. It shows character and the fact that you have tried to learn on your own and come up short is millions of miles beyond what most wannabe game programmer's here ever seem to do.

You show great problem solving skills, great coding ability that is only hindered by lack of information and/or experience - not by skill, commitment, or ability to comprehend because you have shown you have all 3 of those.

If you would like to assist my team please contact me as I would love to have you aboard (and so I can finish this project and move on to something 3D). Who knows, maybe we have the start of something here with us realizing that none of us can do what we really want all by our lonesome. It is far past time to pool our resources. Normally in an internet team you have leadership issues but I think most of us are past that because we realize that alone we just cannot do it, so why would we attempt to destroy a team effort? So far in this project there have been no leadership issues. We are programmers and whatever else the team lead wants us to be. I don't think we would have any leadership issues at this stage in our programming adventure/journey.

Please let me know if you are interested. Don't worry about DirectX/OpenGL, etc, etc. According to the little bit that I know about game programming and what it takes to finish a game, you have what it takes. I'm not the all-knowing DirectX guru or in any way superior to you or anyone else so no worries there. I think you have found the reason most of us can answer questions here is because most of them are quite simple and not overly advanced. This makes all of us look like guru's when there are game programmers out there that have forgotten more than what we've ever known. Someone always knows more. So it's not about knowledge or about super-inflated ego's. For me what makes a person stand out among the rest is attitude. And you my friend have come a long way in a very short time and your attitude is great. Every time you came across a problem you researched it and attempted to find a solution and often did. And when you did find it, you were elated - which is what most of us here feel like when we solve our programming dilemmas.

So I tip my hat to you for sure. You've earned my respect.

That sounds really good Bubba, I need something to work on and 3d engine programming is getting to be too big of a task for lil ol me, I'll pm you after spring break.

Sounds good. Look forward to working with you.

The occlusion for a game like that is quite easy, if its on the screen render it.

And making a 3d engine is quite alot of work, you are right about that, but it sounds like you have something nice to play with. you should worry less about making a full 3d game and more about just playing around with the many aspects, like lighting, occlusion, different algos for every thing. then once you get a uber feeling for every thing, then mabe you can make a game. But there is nothing wrong with not having a 'game' to show. try just focusing on 3d lighting shaders for a while, that is alot of fun, and can look quite impressive, although if you are using OpenGL then you are screwed, because HLSL makes it so much easyer i dont even want to think about doing it in assembly.

"although if you are using OpenGL then you are screwed, because HLSL makes it so much easyer i dont even want to think about doing it in assembly."

Uhhh....what about GLSL?

Yeah, GLSL is about as easy as it gets imo. You don't have to write it in asm...It makes me tickle with joy when people that don't know what they're talking about freely hand out their expert advice.

What is HLSL and GLSL???

HLSL is directX (I think) shading-language and GLSL is OpenGLs Shadinglanguage

http://www.neatware.com/lbstudio/web/hlsl.html. It's really not that hard to google.

dont for get CG! Nvidia for teh win!

Yeah I'll probably dabble with shaders and such...

Maybe I'll keep progressing my normal programming skills, minus game programming..

Take an approach that is set toward improving my basics..

Like tree structures, oct trees, quad trees, binary trees, etc etc...

Vectors and other storage contains, hand made storage containers... Pointer wrappers like smart pointers, etc etc...

But I am definately gonna take bubba up on his offer.

Ok Shamino we need an MSN from you. I don't use AIM and really don't want the piece of poo on my rig.

We are ready to implement the scripting engine. No worries, we will explain how it works to you in great detail. Hopefully by the end of this weekend our actual engine will come to life with characters and all along with scripted movements, events, etc.

I'm not going to lie, it's a lot of code and a very complex system. We tried to make it as simple as possible, but a game becomes quite complex very fast. All of the functionality of the engine is encapsulated in classes and interfaces so it's all composed of nice, neat, efficent classes that each do one important task and do it very well.

I probably will need you to implement the scripting since it is going to require a person with a good knowledge of programming and logic. Once the script tool is completed and synced with the editor I will also create a script debugger since I'm sure we will need one. Basically it works like this:

1. Add object(s) to editor.
2. Editor assigns object IDs automatically.
3. Editor outputs a text file for script tool to read.
4. Script tool reads file and then allows you to insert object/waypoint names where numerical ID's would normally be.
5. Script tool spits out final binary script with ID's, not string names, encoded.
6. Engine loads script at start of level/game/world, etc.
7. Script engine passes messages to objects/engine based on script content, current variables, and overall current game state.

So far the speed of the script and execution of it have been tested as being as fast as or nearly as fast as pure C code. I'm sure this will change as the scripts grow.

After we get all of this working we will probably use the self-same scripting code to develop our own Windows-type message based GUI system for DirectX. We don't want to use the current one being offered by MS.

Many more details will be provided after you speak with our team lead on TeamSpeak. You have my email, so contact me or just get on msn and send me your msn email. Glad to have you aboard.

It takes a lot of guts to admit when you are over your head and I admire that more than any amount of programming knowledge a person has. It shows character and the fact that you have tried to learn on your own and come up short is millions of miles beyond what most wannabe game programmer's here ever seem to do.

I couldn't agree more, g'luck shammy!