http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4075855/The%20Fireskies%20Of%20Terra%20Ultima%20-%2004%20-%20The%20Day%20I%20Ran%20Away.mp3

That was totally awesome!

I do need music for a game

but I need graphics too T_T

I don't think my approach can work on yours, as I'm not using the physics plugin... i could be wrong though, if you're doing collision on your own maybe it could.

Anyway, slopes are two factors (dwdx, dwdy) and you may obtain the real height at any point by measuring the distance to the hotspot and multiplying by the appropiate factor, which will give you a dw that you can add to the height.

About sorting, yes: 45� measured to the scene origin, sorting inverted (seeing as the "camera" doesn't really have a position in 3D space). I also thought bottom of top face would be the way to go but, strangely, bottom of bottom face yielded the best results O_o so I'm using that now.

I just sort by the distance of the front bottom edge of each object towards the origin of the scene.

Slopes don't get sorted right and I'm unsure they ever will. Maybe I should just ditch them. Slope movement is achieved by changing the evaluated height (w) of a platform by the distance from the platform hotspot (dx) multiplicated by a slope factor (dwdx), so w=dx * dwdx

Since I'm rather happy with the sorting now (not perfect but works for certain object sizes), I added some other stuff. Jump is now uncontrollable on air, I guess this should be a toggle. There's a moving platform and the bridge pieces accelerate upwards while you're standing on them.

All of this is to show what can be done here =)

Same file location as always. http://octavoarte.cl/25d_concept.exe

Make sure to refresh your browser cache if you seem to be getting an old file.

Looks good.

I forgot to mention earlier that when you use separate layouts for each room, you get easy control over what's on VRAM, so you can load only the enemies that are in that room, while if you had all rooms in a single layout you'd need to fit ALL GRAPHICS at once in VRAM. Which is unlikely for a game with high res 2D sprites.

I tried the blender demo here and it runs fast.

Then again, I can run GTA4 and Far Cry 2 fast in here so...

Anwyay, this technique in Construct will only work if the proyection that it uses is not ortographic. Also, someone would have to write that scary looking shader >_<

Oh that same guy had another blender demo with SSAO and it didn't work on my card Neither did his radial blur. I get sort of excited thinking what could SSAO bring to a 2.5d scene but then I also think of all the duplicate objects it would need :s

Hm. I woudln't guide myself by that article. All that it explains in detail is how to do a tiled background scoll, and skims over all the important parts. Maybe they're detailed in other parts but anyway. You don't need any of that in Construct, as that structure is meant to organize objects and Construct already does that for you.

BTW I got a new sorting method and it's looking good so far. Got to do some more tests.

http://octavoarte.cl/25d_concept.exe

By now I should edit the first post and put this URL there, as I've been updating the same exe for a while already.

Making and tweaking levels and level design in general would be a pain.

How so? in Castlevania there are no "levels", just rooms. Only special items do not replenish, items that you have to track anyway.

Every room (which go from small hallways to multilevel halls) gets its own layout and is done separately. The only thing that could be a hassle would be connecting them, and even now I'm thinking of a trick for that

Didn't say it couldn't be done. Said it would be slow.

Quoting from *your* link:

[quote:3fxvbs01]Framerate down to a 1/4 the usual though.

yeah. That's slow.

I'll give it a try tomorrow though, it's still interesting even if a bit impractical.

I highly favor parallax mapping over raytracing. Parallax mapping has only a tiny penalty over dot3 I think. (not sure, tis been a long time since I read the paper)

Seems that sorting by the edge of the virtual "box" closest to the viewer did the trick. Although if you go over the Y axis (in Construct located at the top of the layout) things will probably get inverted. So don't.

I present a stacked objects test case, working perfectly. The objects do clip when near the farthest edge of the object they're standing on, but it seems to be slight. Slopes clip horribly though, surely because slops are not accounted for at all in the sorting (yet). Horizontally sloped "walls" don't sort correctly either and never will, as there's no 3D info on such surfaces. Special sprites may be needed for such kind of thing.

Try this: http://octavoarte.cl/25d_concept.exe

I guess it's okay for sorting not working when objects are overlapping in 3D space, but when they're not there is no reason it shouldn't work.

I tried using the distance to a camera at 45� (seeing as currently I'm displacing by Y = RY-W) but it didn't work. Then I realised my reference point is the farthest bottom point of every object, so that was probably a bad reference. I'll try again soon using the top of the object (I'll try both) and see what happens.

Edit: I see now my previous calculation was distance to the origin, which is totally wrong. I'll see what goes on now.

audio equipments usually hold the highest peak for a little while. Maybe that's what you're after?

If you have the stats stored in vars, you could loop on that value, creating a new sphere for each, and placing it on basex + (statvalue*slotwidth)