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Geek Culture / Pseudo 3D. Does this look right?

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Fallout
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 13:53 Edited at: 20th Jul 2011 13:55
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For my next game, like Fat Ball, I'm going for 2D game with a pseudo 3D approach. I'm struggling a little this time though, since Fat Ball had more of an angle to it. This game will be almost top down, with about 10 degrees of rotation on the global x-axis to give it a 3D effect.

I've spent a whole day playing with graphics to make a level, and now I'm dropping in some 3D rendered character sprites to test perspective, and it's hard to get it feeling right.

On the left the character sprites are rendered top down, and on the right they're rendered with the correct angle. The thing is, I've been staring at this so long that it never looks right to me any more.

Obviously these kind of perspectives always look a bit odd, but my question is, does the image on the right look OK? Or, does it look completely wrong. What impression do you get as to the height of the walls too?

Any suggestions for improvement are welcome too. Cheers for your input!



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Kezzla
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 14:02
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The brick wall seems to be on almost a 45 degree angle while the characters are almost top down. I think that's causing some strangeness with the 3d characters in both images.

I think the wall angle has to be much more top down.

you could maybe use shadows to give the illusion of height on the walls.

besides the angle, its looking pretty good.

Sometimes I like to use words out of contents
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Fallout
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 14:24
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Thanks Kezzla. I think exactly the same thing, but it occurred to me that the taller the walls are, the more of the vertical surface you'd see. So if they were twice as high as they are now, you should see the same top (black) surface, but twice as much of the vertical (grey) surface. So by that logic, there should be a way to make it look right either way.

I'm seriously considering biting the bullet and learning Open GL ES for this project. It might be less of a headache ...

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 15:15
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I know this is absolutely not what you asked, but I think the art style is the problem with the 'feel', not the angle - I notice that on FatBall, the background colours are white, and important things are bright colours, and that looks amazing, but here everything just seems to blend together. While it looks more realistic, it's also more confusing.

On the angles point, I can't really tell the difference between the two - the blokes look like they're tilted a lot less than the wall.

(Also there's a weird shadow underneath the left-top wall, which makes it look like it's flying, but that might just be me )

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Fallout
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 15:51 Edited at: 20th Jul 2011 15:53
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I totally agreed about the art style. I've not done a lot of 2D stuff in the past, and I have a feeling that if you want to go 'realistic' with 2D, you need to work very hard at getting good contrast balances etc. Plus I think shadowing is really important (hence my start at shadowing and the floating wall! ).

This problem might be good for me though. It's encouraged me to look into OpenGL ES, and I've found a really good droid tutorial for it which seems really easy to follow. So maybe this game will become my first 3D Android game instead ...

Edit: Thanks for the Fat Ball compliments btw!

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Kezzla
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 16:20
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also, I remember now what your graphic style reminds me of.

Have you every played dink smallwood?

if not check it out. you may get some ideas from it, and it is graphically similar to your screenshots. plus its just a downright funny game.

kezzla

Sometimes I like to use words out of contents
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Van B
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 20:23
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Personally, I would go for more of an angle. Top down games are really tricky to get pretty, it's just not an angle we are used to seeing people at.

Why not go for something more Chaos Engine like?



That looks more like 45 degrees, but the map is still based on a square grid, and aiming and moving is pretty good at that.

Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
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Fallout
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Posted: 20th Jul 2011 21:12
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Well, I rendered a polygon earlier in OpenGL ES 2.0. lol Not exactly ground breaking, but I think it may be time to go full 3D. So thanks for your feedback guys, but I think I have a better direction now!

Btw, you're right about Choas Engine Van. It still looks quality too, plus the blandness of the ground texture is clever. The contrast is really good and clear.

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Libervurto
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Posted: 21st Jul 2011 21:23
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It feels a bit pointless saying this now but your walls - and any standing 3D objects - should taper at their base because we are looking down at them so the bottom is further away - more distorted towards the vanishing point - than the top.

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Fallout
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Posted: 21st Jul 2011 23:08
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I'm still happy to discuss. I agree, to get perspective correct, they need to taper, but I don't know how you'd pull that off with this kind of 2D. Any perspective you add to the wall will look wrong from different perspectives as you scroll around the screen. If it was static, I can imagine it might work though ...

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Plystire
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2011 00:22
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I always thought that isometric, bird's eye, and top-down views went with a strict orthogonal view, meaning no vanishing point. This way, no matter how "far" an object is, it still maintains its usually size.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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