Optional isometric view?

It's easy to add. It already exists. You can maneuver your camera into an isometric position. The only thing they'd need to add is a way of locking that camera position and making obstructions transparent. Easy peasey.

 

Hopefully they add the ability to lock the camera anyway. Its kind of a pain to navigate currently because of how the camera has to be rotated to get around. Locking it in position relative to the player would allow both this overhead view, and a better 3rd-person camera.

 

i would fully support a camera lock to iso view function. as far as the celing dissapearing ala UO, i think that would be great. but for walls not so much due to potential cheating like standing next to a wall and getting see thru mode to see whats on the other side.

jayson, i hopefully can meet you on the field of battle and have an epic clash of the monk halos!

 

The only problem I see with this is a lot of the areas would not be designed to operate like this....

 

Isometric is my favorite view when playing, so if the option is feasible that be nice but i have no complaints if they didnt.

 

I personally wouldn't use it myself but I like the idea for fans that loved the old view.

 

I'm all for standardized view of anything. "But", quest enhancing tools are hard to come by and if it adds depth to any puzzle, then it may also enhance other future quest deepening design.
"Thumbs Up" !
~Time Lord~

 

When I play SWTOR, I often set my camera in a view like this, but I enjoy the freedom of moving the camera when I need to.

Isometric in practice has come to mean a fixed 3/4 view, but really isometric just means fixed view and no freedom of camera movement.

You can get a 3/4 view as it is, as you demonstrated.

 

Someone sent me here from my own thread

As you can see, I avidly agree that something needs to be done about this!

A bit worried that a full on isometric lock might seem too 2D'ish - just improving every 'indoor situation' would be enough for me.

 

You know, the more I think about it, the greater the implication this could have....

The overland view we believe will be a 3/4 view of sorts. If the scene view was also 3/4......MAN that would really "tie it together".

 

Yeah and if they would implement some kind of transition from overland to scene view in which the camera zooms down or up (and is obscured by fog or clouds before loading the new view), this would look like you still being in this world with just the camera having zoomed out or down further.

 

I believe in early demos, that was exactly how RG explained it. You zoomed into scenes on the map.

 

RG described it that, you zoomed into the hex. Zoomed can have different meanings tho. I can envision zoomed to mean that the camera zooms from a distant view on the overworld map to a closer hex view. Or it could be a figure of speech to emphasize that you are moving from an overworld view to a scene view, you are zooming in to a more detailed scene but no camera effects are involved.

 

While I love the use of isometric views in RPGs, at this point it would be too impractical to support both isometric and third-person views as it would have wide-ranging implications on the world building and level designs as well as the gameplay.

Since they've already gone forward with third person, it's really too late now to start thinking about trying to support an isometric view.

I used to prefer the isometric viewpoint and pre-rendered games back when real-time 3d graphics was in its infancy, but now that technology has matured, I'd have to say first person is my preferred perspective , especially VR first person.

Depending on the game, third person views can work as well but I have to say I prefer games that give you the choice between first and third-person perspectives. I really dislike not being able to zoom all the way in to a first person view in SotA.

 

Here's a video from Pillars of Eternity on how they are creating their 2d-3d hybrid isometric scenes in Unity. Quite a different workflow than what our guys are using, but interesting to compare them:

 

Sometimes I see what they're doing and I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just do a proper 3D game. That being said, Pillars of Eternity should run great and look great on older computers.

 

Slightly OT, but I like what I see. Might have to throw $35 their way.

 

That's not a game isometric view. They stuck a camera out there so that you could see a large section, doesn't mean they have an isometric view for game play.

 

Isometric is by definition a locked camera view, and all gameplay for that game has a locked camera view. They're using a lot of static 2D pre-baked images and can only get away with it because gameplay will be entirely isometric.

Project Eternity is designed to look and play like Baldur's Gate.

 

Or



Yes that is the definition. My point is that the linked video doesn't show the isometric camera in use during game play, which is the point of the exemplar.. I've seen many videos of this kind that have a fixed location, fixed view camera showing off how spectacular their graphics and rendering are, and not use isometric cameras in game. A better link is either of the two I've linked. Both show game play footage using isometric views.