isometric drawing order with larger than single tile images - drawing order algorithm?

Posted by Roger Smith on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Roger Smith
Published on 2012-12-05T01:19:26Z Indexed on 2012/12/05 5:33 UTC
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I have an isometric map over which I place various images. Most images will fit over a single tile, but some images are slightly larger. For example, I have a bed of size 2x3 tiles.

This creates a problem when drawing my objects to the screen as I get some tiles erroneously overlapping other tiles.

The two solutions that I know of are either splitting the image into 1x1 tile segments or implementing my own draw order algorithm, for example by assigning each image a number. The image with number 1 is drawn first, then 2, 3 etc.

Does anyone have advice on what I should do?

It seems to me like splitting an isometric image is very non obvious. How do you decide which parts of the image are 'in' a particular tile? I can't afford to split up all of my images manually either.

The draw order algorithm seems like a nicer choice but I am not sure if it's going to be easy to implement. I can't solve, in my head, how to deal with situations whereby you change the index of one image, which causes a knock on effect to many other images. If anyone has an resources/tutorials on this I would be most grateful.

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