Zelevation feature request.

im currently working on an iso game and i'd like to use the zbuffer in order to help with 3d sorting, only problem is that i can only do this by playing with an objects Z elevation, which will also have scaling effects on the object due to the perspective transformations the 3d zelevation in construct causes. i know its late for a feature request, but i would really appreciate it if someone who can play around with the source could create an option to turn off scaling effects, so that zelevation wont distort images/graphics etc, only change their level in the zbuffer for sorting purposes.

i've tried using small z values and playing with everything but its ultimately futile, i can't really fight the projection perfectly, and its not the most elegant of solutions.

why not just use zorder though? just for simplicities sake?

because it just doesn't work well simply for iso sorting unless you make it super complex, and even then you're limited. turning off the projection matrix and faking it works way better in my case, and with events to counteract all the projection like i finally managed it looks flawless, it would be so much simpler to just turn it off.

put it on the feature tracker, I or one of the other guys'll have a look at it at some point.

it's one of those features that might not make sense to anyone but the requester. Maybe a more generalized form would be useful, like an option to change the scaling factor. I've wanted to mess around with scaling factor before for other purposes. its not called scaling factor... I would have to look up the name for it, focal length, field of view...something...point is decrease the scaling of distance objects. if it were adjustable you could decrease it to 0 to get your desired effect, but it would be more generally useful. I think it's also related, to zoom. As of now, I think 3d camera zoom is the equivalent of 3d camera trucking, which it shouldn't be, technically. Zoom should just increase the size of the image, and decrease the field of view, whereas actual movement in the z of a camera should do what it does now when you zoom, which changes the perspective relation of objects in your field of view. I haven't tested it in a while though. I could be wrong about the way construct zooms, and possibly the terminology as well

I can think of a ton of other uses, card games, menus etc. Although set z index would make more sense, minus the nightmare of what happens to the other indices obviously.

Edit:

Then again z height is way different than z order when dealing with distortmaps.

This would be awesome feature to have, would help immensely.

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1010927/isoengine.png">

we need.

Whoa. How - er, never mind, don't bother explaining, I doubt I'd understand. :/

i counteracted the effects of the projection matrix with x,y,width,height, but that causes problems because it's not at all a perfect and needs to be tweaked like crazy in order to work properly. the ability to control the amplitude of the projection matrix's effects on z-elevations would be great.

Can you just use hundreds of layers to do this?

thats hardly a good solution

i counteracted the effects of the projection matrix with x,y,width,height, but that causes problems because it's not at all a perfect and needs to be tweaked like crazy in order to work properly. the ability to control the amplitude of the projection matrix's effects on z-elevations would be great.

Do you think you could share an example of this?

I wouldn't worry about it too much. looks like someone brilliant added a little surprise for the next build.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. looks like someone brilliant added a little surprise for the next build.

They did? I see nothing in the next changelog.

I say looks as I'm not 100% sure, but my understanding is that orthogonal does not change size... dunno about perspective.

Not sure how things are accepted to the actual build, but lets hope it gets in there.

http://construct.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/construct?view=revision&revision=257