>>12602551 Good timing, I started playing D/Generation recently. Pretty cool action-puzzle game. I'm still getting used to the controls though, I started playing it using a controller but I find myself using the keyboard numpad more and more.
>>12602616 This 3D game is one of my favorites. I can't even imagine how they pulled it off in 88, when years later SNES and even Saturn were struggling with 3D.
>The first known isometric video game was probably Treasure Island by Data East, released in Japan in September 1981. It used isometric graphics in a vertically scrolling arcade game. But it was not widely known internationally at first.
>The game most people historically credit is Zaxxon by Sega, released in Japan in late 1981 and internationally in 1982. It was the first internationally prominent isometric arcade game, and it made the style famous: a pseudo-3D shooter where the ship’s altitude mattered.
>So I’d break it down like this:
>First known isometric video game: Treasure Island — Data East, Japan, 1981 >First famous / internationally influential isometric game: Zaxxon — Sega, 1981/1982 >Early iconic static isometric arcade game: Q*bert — Gottlieb, 1982 >First "true-feeling" isometric 3D home computer adventure - Ant Attack — Sandy White / Quicksilva, ZX Spectrum, 1983 >Game that popularized the British isometric adventure style - Knight Lore — Ultimate Play the Game, 1984
>The reason this gets fuzzy is that "3D isometric" can mean different things. Zaxxon and Q*bert use isometric graphics to create a pseudo-3D effect, but their worlds are still fairly constrained. Ant Attack is often treated as a bigger leap because it gave the player more freedom in an isometric 3D city space, including movement with more verticality.
>My verdict: Data East did it first with Treasure Island; Sega made it famous with Zaxxon. If someone at the arcade says “first isometric game,” they probably mean Zaxxon. If we’re being pedantic-historical, it’s probably Treasure Island.
>>12602768 >polygons those are two-dimensional figures that have no special connection to the depiction of 3D scenes, retard who does not know what "isometric" means
>>12603250 Double Dragon uses 3D projection, though it's cabinet projection and not isometric. But tbf most isometric games in the thread don't use true isometric, but dimetric. But we colloquially call it isometric. Real isometric with 120 degree lines doesn't look as good and even on a pixely screen.
>>12603536 I'd say it's an oblique projection, probably somewhere between cabinet (dimension on the diagonal halved in length) and cavalier (dimension on diagonal full length). The perspective in U6 looked better since it wasn't as elongated.
>>12603484 Thanks for clarifying! Made me reconsider my favorite example: >>12603193
Asked the Google's Overview AI using your distinctions in the prompt and got this:
[Future Cop: LAPD]
is neither true isometric nor dimetric; it uses a true 3D perspective projection with a dynamic camera. [1, 2, 3] While it is frequently categorized as an "isometric" or "overhead" shooter due to its high, tilted-down bird's-eye view, the game features a fully 3D engine that handles depth, scale, and angles through realistic perspective rather than flat parallel lines. [1, 3, 4, 5]
The Technical Distinction
* Perspective Projection (Future Cop): Objects shrink as they move farther from the camera. The camera actively rotates, tilts, and tracks your X1-Alpha mech in real time through 3D space, which causes parallel geometric lines to converge at vanishing points. [1, 6, 7]
* True Isometric Projection: A specific type of axonometric parallel projection where all three axes are equally foreshortened, and the angles between them are exactly 120 degrees. Lines do not converge, and objects maintain the exact same pixel size regardless of distance. [1, 8, 9, 10, 11]
* Dimetric Projection: A parallel projection where only two axes have equal angles and foreshortening (commonly used in 2D pixel art games via a clean 2:1 pixel ratio to approximate an isometric look). [8, 12, 13, 14, 15]
>>12603403 >those are two-dimensional figures that have no special connection to the depiction of 3D scenes cool, so don't call it "isometric 3D" but instead just "isometric"
During the late 1990s PlayStation 1 era, the gaming industry used the term "isometric" loosely to describe almost any top-down, fixed-angle, three-quarters view. Because Future Cop: LAPD evolved from EA's Strike series (which historically used flat, axonometric-style cameras), it inherited the distinct visual feel of an isometric game while rendering everything through a modern 3D perspective. [2, 3, 6, 8, 16]
If you are looking to replicate or study this camera system for a project, you can simulate it in modern engines by positioning a perspective camera high above the player character, tilting it down roughly 45 to 60 degrees, and locking its relative offset.
>>12603880 King's Quest and Maniac Mansion are interesting, they use 1 point or 2 point for the backgrounds (and sometimes illogical perspectives that don't follow any rules) but functionally they're parallel projections, since the character remains the same size regardless if he's in the foreground or background, he doesn't shrink when walking towards the back.
I raise you with Mega Man X5. I'm pretty sure there is even a part in this corridor where you have 3 different perspectives at once but I can't find it on video
>>12605653 I tried sharing the sources to each assertion made by the LLM AI, in case people wanted to learn more about perspective. But kept getting the post flagged. Already shared the AI answers with footpage numbers, so I felt the need to clarify why I did not include sauce.
>>12605964 I'm guessing they wanted to keep using the same underlying square grid as the previous games.
For an example of the opposite, look at StarCraft. With StarCraft they switched to isometric from WarCraft 1and 2's square grid maps. But they didn't remake the engine, so the isometric terrain and buildings actually consist of smaller square tiles: >when StarCraft switched from top-down artwork to isometric artwork, the background tile-graphics rendering engine, which dated back to code I had written in 1993/4, was left unchanged.
>Rendering isometric-looking tiles using a square tile engine isn’t hard, though there are difficulties in getting things like map-editors to work properly because laying down one map tile on another requires many “edge fixups” since the map editor is trying to place diagonally-shaped images drawn in square tiles.
>While rendering isn’t so bad, isometric path-finding on square tiles was very difficult. Instead of large (32×32 pixel) diagonal tiles that were either passable or impassable, the map had to be broken into tiny 8×8 pixel tiles — multiplying the amount of path-searching by a factor of 16 as well as creating difficulties for larger units that couldn’t squeeze down a narrow path. https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft/
>>12602551 I had never really thought about it but I guess I really am a simp for these games. It feels like everytime I play one it's kino. Yes, I like Sonic 3D
>>12603536 It's "Military". The confusing thing is that the terrain is not oblique like the objects and people are. The terrain is just flat birds eye view
>>12604071 I figured out a pretty decent control scheme for controller for this game. But then I realized the game demands a lot from aiming, and it became unusable. I think using a controller with touchpad it might be possible to have a good time.Or the new Steam Controller
>>12604071 >>12606584 I prefer playing it with the mouse plus left hand on numpad. You get the quick and precise turning with the mouse but can roll left and right with the numpad.
>>12606129 >>12608218 >>12608384 Maybe a mod could be made to make Fallout 2 text take itself seriously. Would that be possible or would entire areas/quests need to be remade?
Solstice for NES and Mystic Towers for DOS are my two picks. Solstice was brutal-hard, but using a Game Genie with infinite lives and infinite magic I could eventually locate all the staff pieces and get to the end in about 3-4 hours. Could probably do it a lot faster if I actually used a map, but I was a kid and didn't care enough to do so. Mystic Towers is a decent exploration-based game, but it has a constant food timer so you have to be on the move and you will get more than a few deaths just trying to figure out where everything is and where you need to go.
>>12610149 I really want to play Solstice but it filters me every time. It's a game where you really need to map the layout and routing
>but using a Game Genie with infinite lives and infinite magic There is a cheat in game for lives and to start with a lot of magic too, you don't need a game genie
In isometric projection, all three spatial axes (X, Y, Z) are foreshortened equally, and the horizontal axes meet the picture plane at 30° angles. The projection lines hit the projection plane at 90° — it is a specific form of orthographic projection. In oblique projection, the front face of an object is drawn in its true shape (no foreshortening), but the depth axis is projected at a non-90° angle — typically 45° — to the picture plane. This is the fundamental difference: oblique projection violates the orthographic rule, while isometric respects it.
The two subtypes of oblique projection are cavalier (depth drawn at full true length, which causes distortion) and cabinet (depth scaled to half, which looks more natural). The Tibia community has largely settled on Tibia using a cabinet-style oblique projection, where the vertical axis (depth/height) is shown at 45° with reduced scale, while the horizontal tile grid remains axis-aligned.