Alternative to as3isolib?

Question

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a Flash game that involves an isometric space. I've been using as3isolib for a while now, and I'm less than impressed with how easy it is to use. Whether I'm approaching it the wrong way or it's just not that great to use is a question for another post.

Anyways, I've been thinking of a different way to approach the problem of isometric positions, and I think I've got an idea that might work. Essentially, each object that is to be rendered to the iso-space maintains a 3-coordinate position. Those items are then registered with a camera that projects that 3-coordinate position to a 2-coordinate point on the screen according to the math on this Wikipedia article. Then, the MovieClip is added to the stage (or to the camera's MovieClip, perhaps) at that point, and at a child index of the point's y-value. That way, I figure objects that are closer to the camera will be "above" the objects further away, and will get rendered over them.

So my question, then, is two-fold:

1. Do you think this idea will work the way I think it will?

2. Are there any existing 3D matrix/vector packages that I should look at? I know there's a Matrix3 class in Flex 3, but we're not using Flex for this game.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Rotate your view 45 degrees and apply 0.5 y-scale. this makes flash do the math for you. then you just need to solve the depth problem. for that i suggest you to read this.