I’m thinking about using Panda3D to create a “3D tile” based game such as Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea.
Here are some screenshots of what I’m referring to:
f.imagehost.org/view/0177/1_34
f.imagehost.org/view/0961/2_17
Many more pictures can be found herehttp://www.gamedev.net/community/fo … _id=391326
Another example:
f.imagehost.org/view/0746/3_9
…and more pictures can be found here: gamedev.net/community/forums … cyear=2008
Anyways, how easy would this be to create?
These games seem to use “3D tiles” for the terrain with a grid-based system for movement.
Can anybody give me any advice or tips on creating this?
Thanks so much!
well actually thats not very hard to do. there are several different “styles” in the images you linked. ranging from simple cubes to somewhat neat blocky terrain.
grid based approaches are usualy quite easy. creating a 2d-grid layout is a matter of 2 "for"loops. and setting the objects position according to it.
in panda you can create a dummy node for each of your tiles, place them in the world. and just reparent your objects to it.
for the tile-geometry you have many different options like
-using pre-made 3d-meshes (dungeon siege does it that way)
-using a continous terrain surface (might limit you a bit)
-create the surfaces/meshes on the fly from some input data , for example an image.
if you look at the procedural-geometry sample you can see how you would create your block-meshes on the fly.
for texture-mapping you can use panda’s automated texture-coordination-generator and well that’s pretty much it.
it might be a bit slow initially (having many seperated blocks with only few triangles each is not very hardware friendly) but panda provides an easy way to fix this so dont worry if your FPS are a bit low at first.
you could make a small in-game editor for editing blocks,too.
would be fun to see something like that be done with panda, its not hard so go ahead and give it a try:) if you need help. dont hesitate and ask.
btw. there where similar projects done with panda in the past. such as a hex-grid-tile based game.
This is for Thomas,
What would be the advantage of a Isometric tile game in 3d vs 2d?
Unless you were going to move the camera? Wouldn’t 2d be a better solution if the camera is fixed?
Because if the camera is fixed wouldn’t it be faster to use sprites versus models?
Now a isometric-like game in 3d makes since (such as Warhammer), where you can rotate, zoom, and have 3d height management in terrain.
JB SKaggs
today’s hardware is optimized for 3D… optimized a LOT. games like you linked above will run on pretty much every computer sold in the last 12 years.
isometric rendering is a tiny bit faster than perspektive one. aside from that there is no real advantage or disadvantage. but for 2.5d isometric i would go 3D. simply cause its less of a pain to mess with the z-coords.
I’m also doing an isometric game using panda3d. The advantage of using a 3d engine vs a 2d for a 2.5d sprite game is you can take advantage of 3d effects, shaders, and so forth.