Isometric Action Game (WIP)

Hello All,

I've been spending some time over the last couple of months putting together an isometric game engine which I am hoping to use to make a kind of 'sci fi top down shooter'.

It is still very much a work in progress and all the graphics are still placeholders (Psionic's Zombie & Guard models mainly, along with some dodgy looking bullets).

If you feel like having a look at it then it can be downloaded from here:

http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~Matthew.Lloyd/lloyd/BetaIsoEngine.zip

(it is very basic at the moment - you can move a player around which a few other 'guard' models follow, pressing the left mouse button spawns some zombie models around the map):

Controls -
Joystick / Game pad to move, buttons 1,2 to shoot
I should have set the default to be keyboard controls so if you want to change to keyboard controls then you will need to do this:

open file "inputmap.txt"
remove the ";" from in front of the lines which specify keyboard controls (should be fairly obvious) and put a ";" symbol before the lines which specify joystick controls.
(then in the game press z or x to shoot and use the cursor keys (arrow keys) to move around.

Known issues: The initial spawn point may require you to move around a little to get past your friendly AI units, collision map not accurate yet - units can walk into walls a little way which can look a bit strange ), AI units can get stuck occasionally.

Download (14MB - hopefully that is not too large (sorry to all those 56k people) at:

http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~Matthew.Lloyd/lloyd/BetaIsoEngine.zip



Screenshot:



In case you are interested it was written in blitzplus although the sprites for the units were rendered in blitz3d.

sexy :-)

It does look quite nice, downloading now :)

Please Remake Space Hulk... :)

Grisu - that's along the lines of what I'm doing although it will be more of an arcade game than a turn based strategy. We also won't be staying with rooms and corridors as tight as this for some of the game.

Some of the features of the 'engine' behind this game that are not shown in this small demo are that it is possible to have sections of the pre rendered map animated - which includes animating the collision map & the 'z maps' if desired so that we can have things like doors being opened/closed/destroyed, blinking lights. Because all the units' image data is stored in system memory not video memory that leaves a lot more to play with in most cases for units and it means that the level images, which are stored in video memory, are left with a bit more space to work with. Unlike most of my earlier games the pathfinding is not precalculated but is done in real time using 'steering' methods. Although they work better in open environments with the right weightings they can work okay in environments like this.

Well i loaded it up and thought it was pretty neat, although it's very basic and the collision and visibilty of the entities is poor, i can see what your trying to do.
I like and hope you progress well :)

That picture looks interesting - somewhat grey - but interesting.

Hi sinu - the problem with the collisions is simply because I haven't generated the 'collision map' very accurately yet - an easy fix. It is also very basic as you say but it is not really a 'game' yet, will be eventually though.

Puki - it's not textured yet, which is why it is grey.

nicE :] - some interesting stuff starting to appear on bb
again..good stuff ;)

Matty-

These graphics are excellent. I like the clean cut look - you might consider using fairly subtle/minimal textures for the levels.... but its your baby.

Thanks for the warm responses.

Nomen - I really like the look of the level without textures myself but I'm sure it will look even better with texturing.

Just looking at your PC specs in your signature I'd be interested to find out how it runs on your system? Could you let me know, if you've downloaded it, how it runs on your system.

Thanks.

Well I thought I had followed your instructions for playing it with keys but I couldn't get the bloke moving - I'll have another go later.

Run's a bit slow for the first few seconds after it loaded but then seems to run OK.

What tools are you using for the GFX?

I love the graphics style, looks prendered, is it?
I can imagine playing a MGS clone with that viewpoint and graphics, it would be awesome.

The backdrop is pre rendered (the artist I am working with uses 3dsMAX) and although in this small demo it is static we are going to have sections of it animated such as doorways, fans or other components you might expect would move (including lighting). The animated sections won't purely be visual - they will be able to, if we want, affect the underlying collision map - so a door which is blown open or a weak point in a wall which is destroyed will become 'walkable' which the various AI units will be able to navigate.

The sprites are simply 3d models ( psionic's models) which have been rendered as a series of images (the soldier has a little under 9000 frames of animation stored in his file although for this demo they don't all get played, likewise the Zombie has several thousand frames of animation which do all get played) and stored in my own animation/image format.

I've never played MGS? Metal Gear Solid? so don't really know what it is like.

Nomen -

the top of the inputmap.txt file should look like this if you are testing with keyboard:

player=1
moveup=keyboard200
movedown=keyboard208
moveleft=keyboard203
moveright=keyboard205
action1=keyboard44
action2=keyboard45
action3=keyboard46
;moveup=joystick
;movedown=joystick
;moveleft=joystick
;moveright=joystick
;action1=joystick1
;action2=joystick2
;action3=joystick3

You may need to 'wobble player around a bit at first' to get past the other friendly units (still needs some work),
if you still cannot get past them then you can remove them - open the file "soldiertemplate.txt" and delete the 3 sections after the first beginning with "newunittemplate=" (ie the sections for player2 player3 and player4....)

Thanks for the nfo on the GFX Matty.

I forgot to comment out the joystick stuff so the keys are working fine for me now.

This runs at a good speed on my machine even with a ton of zombies, but the hard drive is making a fair bit of noise and there's the occasional short pause so I guess my lack of memory is causing some issues.

It needs a fair amount of system memory available to run. When running in the ide or windowed task manager says it uses about 130-150MB of RAM (and about 30MB of Video RAM).

The main things that take up memory in this game are:

The sprites animation data - the .pix files in the Zombie and Soldier folders basically go straight into system memory (15 & 17 MB each), the Zmaps - 30MB each (1 for floor/1 for whole scene), the collision map (7.5MB). (I guess that adds to about 100MB) there are also a few other bits and pieces which get generated in game which take up some room).