Quick update on Java port

I'm getting there, and since I already have all the functions I need to draw things (I just need to port them) I don't really expect any trouble.

Fully fake-3D rendered 3D world.

I'm pretty happy that I can report some more progress:

However, I am running into performance issues that I cannot properly address as long as I am using Game Maker.

The trouble is, I need to do a lot of math in Game Maker, whereas in Java I only need a few lines of code.

So I'll be busy getting the exact same thing to work in Java right now and then I'll be continuing from that.

Demo

Build 2: Full rotation

Isometric? Check.
Fully rotatable over 360 degrees? Check.
Character movement? Check.

I think it's about time to call Indev version 0.02.
You may notice that the tile textures are gone, but that's because I'm still switching to primitives for drawing them.
But that's going to be in Indev version 0.03.

Implementing theory into the game

Sorry that it's taking a while, I am busier than expected with other projects.
However, that does not stop me from making progress with this one:

Still need to transform the tiles themselves, but I'm getting there.

Vertexes demo

Well, I got the drawing itself sorted out, as you can see:

It behaved exactly as I wanted it to behave, so minimum effort on this part.
The hard part now is calculating the grid nodes to draw the texture at.

Build 1: Testing the isometric grid & explanation

So I managed to get some plain isometric game mechanics going.

This is just a quick tech demo, nothing extraordinary, but I plan on using the mechanics in the final game.
(which will be cross-platform btw, since I noticed there is one guy with linux viewing this blog as well. Blame Google's statistics.)

Meet L.A.G (Long Arms Guy).

It is a quick and ugly stick figure, but it's great for quick testing, since only enough effort to make things clear needs to go into the game.

LAG can move in eight directions on the grid of isometric tiles.
(The tiles themselves are isometric. I am still looking for a way to render square tiles transformed properly)

The fun thing is, if you try and control the prototype, the floor seems to move and LAG seems to stand still.
That's kind of right as well. The tiles move on screen, whereas LAG stays invariably in the center.

Now here's what's special: LAG is actually moving along a grid of square tiles, in the normal eight directions, whereas he seems to be moving along the isometric eight directions.

Here's the difference to illustrate my point:

And the grid is not even really a grid - it's merely an array of values, filled with "1"s to indicate grass:
[1][1]
[1][1]

So in fact, LAG is not moving along an isometric grid, but along indices in an array.
And still, it's displayed on the screen like it's walking through a proper (if a bit abstract) 3d world, all in less than 30 minutes of work.

As you can see, the development of the mechanics is going smooth.