Re: 2d/3d Debate
by demosthenes2k8 » Mon 11. Apr 2011, 04:06
I was on a really long car ride today, and came up with an interesting idea. What about two major map styles? The first view would be what the players see in the House, the Land, and Skaia - an isometric grid-style view where they walk along the grid. When they're at a location that they like (they have to have opened up a path to it from another square though) they can hit a button to "enter" it, which will turn it into a 2d platforming region. That region's "randomly" generated based on the XYZ coordinates of it, as well as where it is (Land, House, Skaia) and the Land aspects (if it's the Land). At different locations in the square, there will be doors or something similar that act as waypoints to unlock an adjacent square. Players can only move to squares on the grid that they've unlocked in this way.
Doing this would greatly simplify storing the layouts of everything - just save the types of each square on the grid, and whether they've been unlocked or not, and any square-specific data (who is in a village, etc), and the game will convert its position and type into the same "map" each time.
How would this affect multiple players? Simple. When more than one player is in the same place (for the rest of this post I'll assume Skaia, just for ease of typing), they'll see each others' locations ON THE GRID. If they go to the same square, and "enter", then they can meet up with the other player(s) in that square, because they'll have the same platform "map" and each other players' "map" position.
By the way, this would play VERY nicely with the "chessboard" theme of Skaia, and modular house creation, for obvious reasons. It would also do somewhat well with Lands, since it would still allow platforming, rapid movement around an area, and themed zones, without forcing the game to pregenerate a huge world, and ease travel across the Lands so that players don't have to grind just to make it back to a village.
What would this mean for visuals? Well, it would probably be best defined as "3d models on a pseudo-3d isometric grid, then the same 3d models but larger on 2d", so basically 2d gameplay.
Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I'll clarify if I have to. Also, I'm rubbish with art but I'll try to make a mockup...if possible.