[Poll] Should we change projection?

[Robin]

Don't you mean 17 of 20 rather than 7 of 20?

[giniu]

Don't you mean 17 of 20 rather than 7 of 20?

well, in post description there was information that valid vote is one with comment. Only 7 people said what they voted for. I think we can think about closing it sooner, but I'd like to know at least some nicks of people who vote for certain option so I can point finger to them if we change again (which I hope will not happen!)

[tentus]

From experience, dimetric is easier to work with, from the art side of things. It's easier to previsualize, easier to rough in, easier to reinterpret. You also don't run into the confusing little oddities that trimetric creates, such as pressing up making you run NNW, pressing up-left making you run W, and so on.

I also can't remember the last game I played in... I guess Fallout, way back in the day? Great, now I feel ancient. My point is, while trimetric is a laudable goal, dimetric is much, much more realistic. Sort of like having games in black-and-white: it's cool, but it takes a ton of extra work to make it pan out.

Edit: also, I clicked on the wrong vote choice (for some reason I expected them to be alphabetical). I meant to cast my lot for dimetric.

[ishkabible]

it seems like most people like dimetric better. it just looks more realistic and more polished.

[slime]

I might be a bit biased because I spent many many hours playing Diablo 1 and 2, but I definitely prefer dimetric. It looks more realistic to me.

[Ryne]

Just for the record, does anyone think that the game should have fallen into the Isometric, or "Oblique" perspective? I'm just wondering what everyone thinks about the 2 options. I personally don't really like either, but chose dimetric since it was the better of the 2. Would anyone have suggested something different?

From an art perspective, Either Isometric/Oblique would be the easiest to work with. I just want to see opinions so that there wouldn't need to be another change in the future. I'm not really certain on what strain EITHER of the perspectives would put on the programmers, but one of the 2 I mentioned would definitely be the easiest for artists. Especially when the project grabs other artists to help, they will likely (like myself) already be familiar with isometric/oblique, and therefore wouldn't have to learn something new, personally I'm not really willing to try and learn a new perspective for something that I would probably have limited involvement in. Though if it required skills that I already know, I'm more likely to help.

Examples of isometric:
http://fool.deviantart.com/art/iso-cast ... s/iso&qo=0
http://browse.deviantart.com/digitalart ... /#/d10ql1o

Examples of oblique:
http://browse.deviantart.com/digitalart ... n#/d2oju28
http://gas13.deviantart.com/art/Team-Fo ... niso&qo=16 (i think)

[TechnoCat]

Just for the record, does anyone think that the game should have fallen into the Isometric, or "Oblique" perspective? I'm just wondering what everyone thinks about the 2 options. I personally don't really like either, but chose dimetric since it was the better of the 2. Would anyone have suggested something different?

I chose dimetric, but oblique is my personal favorite. It matches the dpad.

[kikito]

Oblique hits the right chords for me.

However!

There are a ton of oblique rpg games out there. I know, I know, also isometric ones. But they are an order of magnitude less abundant. If anything, thanks to rpgmaker.

My point is that using oblique might be easier on the artistic side, but it'll also be more difficult to make differentiating art. But maybe having differentiated art from is a goal too high for a mostly programmer-driven game.

So I think oblique is nice and easier, and dimetric a little more difficult, but with higher rewards. The eternal fight against low-risk, less-benefit and high-risk, greater-benefit. I don't know which one to choose.

Fortunately oblique wasn't in the options chosen, so I didn't have to decide!

[giniu]

The problem with isometric is that (as I explained earlier) cannot be done at all in games. Dimetric is correct term for all projections in games that are symmetric around Y axis. And oblique was not considered again, because it's least realistic one. While (as described in focus) we aim for realistic projections. Probably that's why trimetric was chosen as one that have least (no) symmetries. Because the talk was about directions of movement and angles, dimetric was only option to keep the thing realistic (one symmetry) and make the movement how community likes it.

Anyway, I decided to close the poll already, even that we don't have required amount of valid votes and change the projection to dimetric. Following projection properties were chosen:

• we scale each world axis by \(30\sqrt2\)
• we rotate the world along Y axis by \(\pi/4\)
• we rotate the world along X axis by \(\arcsin \frac13\)
• we project onto screen plane (Z=0)
• we mirror Y coordinates

That way we obtained integer projection matrix that is close to our previous projection (height is preserved):
\[\left(\begin{array}{rrrr}
30 & 0 & 30 & 0\\
-10 & -40 & 10 & 0\\
0 & 0 & 0 & 0\\
0 & 0 & 0 & 1
\end{array}\right)\]

I will soon upload changes and post .love file.

--edit:
you can see the new dimetric version here. For now, I'm leaving the old trimetric version on github.

[ishkabible]

oblique isn't very realistic. i don't find it very appealing, i was hoping that this would be based on click's as apposed to the key pad. if the key pad is used then i would say make the game compensate and actually move in the correct direction as apposed to the diametric coordinates.