Graphics Isometric Terrain (simcity style) GM:S Question

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Newblet

Guest
I've been doing a lot of looking around. There are 16 threads in this forum with "isometric" in the title... well 17 now. I've been looking around the internet for resources as well and have a general idea of what I want to do. The problem I'm having is how best to accomplish this in GM:S. I'm having a feeling I will get to know ds_grids very well.

Essentially: I want to go from this (Isometric Demo in GM:S)
upload_2016-10-1_14-19-25.png

To something like this:
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=51988.0
upload_2016-10-1_14-24-20.png


A more specific issue I'm having is how to go from blocky isometric:
upload_2016-10-1_14-21-2.png

To something more like:
upload_2016-10-1_14-17-22.png


If I try to line the grids up on this artwork I get:
upload_2016-10-1_14-17-4.png
 
S

seanm

Guest
Someone on the forums was doing exactly this. not sure who though.


In terms of having polygon terrain. I believe you would use primitives and draw all the triangles yourself. Each triangle has a height and a slope, and you can do some math to figure out the height value of any object walking on the grid.
 
N

Newblet

Guest
Yep, you are talking about this thread which is basically what I'm talking about, but they don't get into details. The thread ends with the OP saying he will check out the isometric demo.
https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/isometric-top-down-engine-with-height-method.716/

I'd like to have a more robust discussion about how best to do this in GM:S. The room-maker has an isometric grid system already, so it's not hard at all for me to get a blocky-style isometric game going. I'm focusing more on the sim-city style terrain.

Your suggestion is basically what the OP did in thread I mentioned above, but is this the best way? What do I lose by leaving GM:S's built-in grid system and drawing my terrain on a surface? I don't know enough about GM:S to make an informed decision about how to do simcity style terrain correctly in GM:S. Native isometric grid in GM:S is apparently buggy?

 
Z

zircher

Guest
The solution is simple, you just need a variety of wedge shapes to transition from one level to the next. As demonstrated here...


If you look at these tiles you can see a pattern here based on the number of corners that are high and low. Depending on how you code your levels, this might be a stored set of binary values or it be something that you calculate on the fly.
 
N

Newblet

Guest
Awesome. Thank you to everyone that gave me more info to look into. I will report back when I have some progress :)
 
N

Newblet

Guest
Yes! Lol, that's basically what I am trying to learn how to do efficiently. That looks great.
 
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