In video games and pixel art, "isometric" refers to some form of projection of axonometry (typically, a 2: 1 pixel dimethric projection form) in which the angle of view tilts to reveal another aspect of the game environment than usual visible from the top perspective or the pure underside, resulting in a three-dimensional effect. In almost all cases, however, the term "isometric" is misused; in actual isometric projection, the representations of the axes x , y and z are very oriented 120 ° to each other, whereas in the other projection angle vary. The terms "3/4 perspective", "2.5D" and "pseudo-3D" are also often applied, although these terms may have slightly different meanings in different contexts.
After common, isometric projection becomes less common with the advent of more powerful 3D graphics systems, and as the game begins to focus more on individual actions and characters. However, games using isometric projection have seen little revival in recent years, especially in Kickstarter.
Video Isometric graphics in video games and pixel art
Overview
Benefits
In the field of computer and video games and pixel art, this technique is becoming popular because of the ease of 2D sprite and tile graphics can be created to represent a 3D game environment. Because parallel projected objects do not resize as they move in the game field, no computer is required to scale sprites or perform complex calculations necessary to simulate visual perspectives. This allows the older 8-bit and 16-bit game systems (and, more recently, handheld and cellular systems) to portray large 3D areas with ease. And while the deep-seated problems of parallel projection can sometimes be a problem, a good game design can alleviate this.
There is also an excess of gameplay to use an isometric or pseudo-isometric perspective in the video game. For example, compared to pure top-down games, they add a third dimension, paving new paths for aiming and creating platforms. Second, compared to the first or third person game, they allow you to more easily move and control a large number of additional units, such as a bunch of full characters in a role-playing game. Furthermore, they can alleviate the situation where a player can become distracted from the core of the game mechanism by having to continue to manage a heavy 3D camera. That is. players can focus on playing the game itself, and not moving and rotating the camera.
Finally, there is an artistic advantage . Although not limited to isometric gaming video, the previously created 2D graphics can have higher precision and use more advanced techniques than is possible on commonly available computer hardware, even with 3D hardware acceleration enabled. Similar to the modern CGI used in moving images, graphics can be assigned once on a super-powerful computer or render farm, and then displayed on less powerful consumer hardware, such as tablet computers and Web browsers. This means that the static pre-render isometric graphics often look better than the real-time given, and can be better over time compared to their peers. However, this advantage may be less pronounced now than in the past.
One of the disadvantages of pre-rendering graphics is that, as screen resolution continues to increase, static 2D images need to be rendered rectally to compensate, or experience pixelation. This is not always possible, however; as it did in 2012, when BioWare's Baldur's Gate (1998) was remade into Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition by Beamdog's studio. New developers choose to scale simple 2D charts, or "zoom in", without re-rendering game sprites, as they do not have the original game creative art assets. (The original data is lost in the flood.) Changing the resolution of a given real-time game is trivial, when compared.
Difference with isometric projection "true"
The usual projection used in videogames deviates slightly from "true" isometric because of the limitations of raster graphs. The lines at x and y directions will not follow a neat pixel pattern if drawn at 30 Â ° needed to horizontally. While modern computers can eliminate this problem using anti-aliasing, previous computer graphics do not support sufficient color or have sufficient CPU power to achieve this. So instead, a 2: 1 pixel pattern ratio will be used to draw the axis lines x and y , so this axis follows 26,565 Â ° ( arctan 0.5 ) angle to horizontal. (Game systems that do not use square pixels can, however, produce different angles, including "true" isometric.) Therefore, this projection shape is more accurately described as a variation of the projected dimension, since only two of the three angles between axis are equal to one (116,565 Â °, 116,565 Â °, 126,870 Â °).
Maps Isometric graphics in video games and pixel art
History of isometric gaming videos
While the history of computer games saw some real 3D games soon after the early 1970s, the first video game that used a different visual style than isometric projection in the sense described above was an arcade game in the early 1980s.
1980s
The use of isometric graphs in a video game started with Sega's Zaxxon , was released as an arcade game in January 1982. It is an isometric shooter where players fly spaceships through scroll levels. This is also one of the first video games featuring shadows.
Another early isometric game was Q * bert , in which Warren Davis and Jeff Lee began reprogramming in April 1982 and released in October/November 1982. Q * bert showed pyramids static in an isometric perspective, with players controlling characters that can jump on the pyramid.
The following year in March 1983, the arcade game of the isometric platform Congo Bongo was released, running on the same hardware as Zaxxon . This allows the player's character to move at a larger isometric level, including a true three-dimensional ascent and a fall. The same may be in the Marble Madness title, released in 1984.
At present, isometric games are no longer exclusive to the arcade market and also enter home computers with the Blue Max release for the 8-bit Atari family and Ant Attack for Spectrum ZX in 1983 In Ant Attack , players can move forward in any direction from the rolling game, offering complete free movement rather than staying on one axis like with Zaxxon . The view can also be changed around 90 degrees axis. The ZX Crash magazine consequently awarded it 100% in the graphics category for this new technique, known as "Soft Solid 3-D".
A year later, ZX Spectrum saw the release of Knight Lore, which is generally regarded as the revolutionary title that defines the next isometric adventure game genre. Following Knight Lore , many isometric titles are visible on home computers - to the extent that is considered the second most cloned software after WordStar , according to researcher Jan Krikke. Other examples of them are Highway Encounter (1985), Batman (1986), Head Over Heels (1987) and La AbadÃÆ'a del Crimen (1987). The isometric perspective is not limited to arcade/adventure games, though; For example, the 1989 Strategy game Populous uses an isometric perspective.
1990s
Throughout the 1990s several highly successful games like SimCity 2000 (1994), Civilization II (1996), X-COM (1994) and Diablo (1996) using a fixed isometric perspective. But with the advent of 3D acceleration on personal computers and game consoles, games that previously used 2D perspectives generally began to shift to real 3D (eg perspective projections) instead. This can be seen in the successors of the games above: For example SimCity (2013), Civilization VI (2016), XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) and Diablo III (2012) all use full 3D; and while Diablo II (2000) uses a persistent perspective like its predecessor, it is optionally possible to scale the perspective of sprites in the distance to lend a "pseudo-3D" appearance.
Also during the 1990s, isometric graphs began to be used for Japanese role-playing video games (JRPGs) on console systems, especially tactical role-plays, many of which still use today's isometric graphics. Examples include Front Mission (1995), Tactics Ogre (1995) and Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) - the latter using 3D graphs to create an environment where players can freely rotate the camera. Other titles like Vandal Hearts (1996) and Breath of Fire III (1997) carefully mimic the isometric views, but actually use perspective projections.
Infinity Machine
Black Isle Studios and BioWare helped popularize the use of isometric projection in role-playing games in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These studios utilize Infinity Engine game engines in some of their titles, developed by BioWare for Baldur's Gate (1998). This machine gained significant traction among the players, and many developers have since tried to imitate and improve it in various ways. The Infinity Engine itself was also recently overhauled and modernized by Beamdog in preparation for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition (2012), as well as a remake of some other classic Infinity Engine titles.
Two other titles by Black Isle Studios, Fallout (1997) and Fallout 2 (1998), use trimetric projection .
Kickstarter
Isometric projection has seen continuous relevance in the new millennium by releasing some new crowdfunded role-playing games in Kickstarter. This includes the series Shadowrun Returns (2013-2015) by Harebrained Schemes; series of Pillars of Eternity (2015-2017) and Tyranny (2016) by Obsidian Entertainment; and Torture: Tides of Numenera (2017) by inXile Entertainment. Both Obsidian Entertainment and InXile Entertainment have been used, or established by, former members of Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment; and Obsidian Entertainment in particular want to "bring back the look and feel of Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torture " with The Pillar of Immortality . Finally, some pseudo-isometric 3D RPGs, such as Divinity: Original Sin (2014), Wasteland 2 (2014) and Dead State (2014) ), has also been crowdfunded using Kickstarter in recent years. However, these titles differ from the above games, as they use perspective projections rather than parallel projections.
Instead of being based purely on nostalgia, the rise of isometric projection is a tangible result, a real benefit as well.
Similar projection
The term "isometric perspective" is often misused for any game with a normally fixed top view, which initially appears "isometric". These include games that utilize trimetric projections, such as Fallout (1997) and SimCity 4 (2003); games using oblique projections, such as Divine Divinity (2002) and Ultima Online (1997); and games that utilize a combination of perspective projections and bird's eye view, such as Silent Storm (2003), Torchlight (2009) and Divinity: Original Sin 2014). There is also a title that utilizes polygonal 3D graphics, but graphs them to the screen using parallel projection rather than perspective projection. These include Syndicate Wars (1996), Dungeon Guards (1997) and Depths of Peril (2007). And, there are a number of games that use a combination of pre-given and real-time isometric graphics, such as Elemental Evil Temple (2003) and Torture: Tides of Numenera (2017) which uses 2D pre-render backgrounds and 3D character models created in real-time; and Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (2003), which uses a real-time 3D background and a hand-drawn 2D character sprite.
One advantage of top-down oblique projection is that the image fits in a square tile.
Screen mapping to world coordinates
One of the most common problems with programming games that use isometric projection (or probable) is the ability to map between events occurring in the 2d field of the screen and the actual location in the isometric space, called world space. A common example is selecting a tile located just below the cursor when the user clicks. One such method uses the same rotation matrix that initially produces an inverted isometric view to change the point on the screen coordinate to the point that will lie on the surface of the board before it is played. Then, the values ​​of x and y of the world can be calculated by dividing by the width and height of the tiles.
Other methods that are less computationally intensive and can have good results if our method is called on every frame, rests on the assumption that the square board is rotated 45 degrees and then squashed to half the original height. The virtual grid is overlaid on the projection as shown in the diagram, with the x-axis and virtual-y axes. Clicking each tile on the central axis of the board where (x, y) = (tileMapWidth/2, y), will produce the same tile values ​​for the x-world and the y-world in this example is 3 (0 indexed). Selecting a tile located in one of the positions to the right on the virtual grid, actually removes one fewer tiles in the world-y and one in the x-world. This is the formula that calculates the world-x by taking virtual-y and adding virtual-x from the center of the board. Likewise world-y is calculated by taking virtual-y and reducing virtual-x. This calculation measures from the central axis, as shown, so the result must be decoded by half board. For example, in C programming language:
This method may seem counter intuitive initially because the coordinates of the virtual grid are drawn, rather than the original isometric world, and there is no one-to-one correspondence between the virtual tile and the isometric tile. The tile on the grid will contain more than one isometric tile, and depending on where it is clicked it has to map to different coordinates. The key in this method is that the virtual coordinate is a floating point number rather than an integer. Values ​​of virtual-x and y can be (3.5, 3.5) which means the center of the third tile. In the diagram on the left, this falls in the 3rd tile in detail y. When virtual-x and y have to add up to 4, world x will also be 4.
Example
Dimethical Projection
Oblique projection
See also
- Clipping
- Filming Machine
- Category: Video game with isometric graphics: isometric game video list
- Category: Video game with oblique graphics: list of oblique video games
- Commons: Category: Screenshot of isometric video games: gallery screenshot of isometric video games
References
External links
- A classic 8-bit isometric game that attempts to crack a print at Eurogamer.com
- Best Isometric Games at Kotaku.com
- Best Isometric Video Games at Kotaku.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments