Extremely basic question

[neutralboolean]

I'm as new to working with engines as new can be. I've been shopping around but I'm not even sure what I'm looking for in an engine.

I realize most isometric views are achieved through clever placement of a camera in 3-space but would it be easier to find an engine specifically for that, or to just restrain the camera in any old 3D engine?

Links to good tutorials would be appreciated too.

[CuteAlien]

That question is not easy to answer. I don't know anyone who has writen a isometric games in a 3D engine and then in an isometric engine for comparison. I never worked with a pure isometric engine myself, but I think I get the basic idea how they function.

If you are sure you never want anything but isometric I would recommend to look at such engines first. You can get an isometric look with a 3D engine with the restrained camera. But there's a difference in the way you create your levels. In isometric engines level-editing is basically about tile-placement. And the hard part - creating good tiles. Which is very different from 3D modeling and scene placement in a 3D editor. So if you work alone it might be a good idea if you start by looking at such tools. Play around with an isometric editor for a while as first step. That way you will also quickly learn the things the corresponding engines offer. It's likely a lot faster to create a game that way. That's unless you are already very familliar with 3D modeling tools and SceneEditors.

Irrlicht is on a lower level here. If you create an isometric game with it you will have to write your editor as first step. Which is not always a bad thing - it can be very game-specific and have any features you can code. And you get a more flexible camera for specifal effects (rotation!).

[neutralboolean]

Thank you for the speedy reply!

I'll keep on researching but I have this bookmarked.

[Mel]

An Isometric view is just a perspectiveless camera anyway, You can do that with Irrlicht, so you could start by that, the point is that, although things would look isometric indeed, you need to keep in mind some rules of the cameras, such as that anything behind your camera position/near plane wouldn't be visible, even if the viewing angle would insinuate the oposite.

In fact, many games aren't really isometric, they just have a camera whose fov is very closed, and the point of view is placed very far away so it can enclose all the interesting things the application wants to render. Or just ignore the isometry per se, and keep the orientation of the camera focused on the important stuff, but far away so it gives a good perspective of every important element on the screen.