Well, actualy I think the first movie came before any of the video games.  it was one of the first to use Computer Graphics I think it came out in 1982?  This one looks to be released sometime in 2010

Heehe, this engine is turning out better than I expected!  i think this engine could be used for any number of games, ranging from Strategy and Tactics, to Simulation like Civilization.

Alright, here we are, a map editor featuring the newly completed object display techniques.  It is also now dependent on CelticIII, as it uses real(9,2... to store pictures without updating the screen.  In the editor, it uses code for both regular Or-ed objects (fast) and more complex masked objects (more than twice as slow).  The cursor is an OR object, when you add tiles, you are writing Masked objects to the terrain.



I can't erase Masked objects yet because I am actualy adding them to the Terrain pic, and so they overwrite data beneath them.  With the OR cursor, I am never storing it to the pic, so although I must update the screen ever time i want to use it, I can move it without destroying the background terrain.  

The only problem that would occur would be when an object is in front of a tile in front of another object. Then the top of the lower object would be cut off by the "overlapping" tile. The solution I see to that is to split tiles into two parts: the "normal square" of the tile, and the "overlapping" section. I don't know how this will affect your drawing engine, or if you simply add the "overlapping section" as a completely new parameter of your tile (and not modifying the current tile-drawing engine), I don't know how much extra space it would take. However, this eliminates the problem I just mentioned (this idea working with the "height" idea mentioned earlier - except I now see it more as a simple flag (either 0 or 1) which indicates whether the current object has the "overlapping" section or not)

Well, the way the masks are designed lets them be applied  all at one.  So what you described would work without any modification.  Also, I said in the previous post that I was going to make all objects applied with OR logic (no white) so this eliminates the problem with drawing the objects in a specific order.  All I need to do is draw each object onto the screen, mask each object with the landscape, and recall the landscape picture with OR logic.  The mask design of the sprites will take care of all the problems I'm working on the object system now.

Yes thats true.  I myself never learned assembly, and I really have no intention to. Its just not my language.

On a slightly different note, I was fooling around and created some tiles with different heights for your visual enjoyment


I'm working on getting objects to display nicely, and use this to throw together a quick editor so I can make more nice maps

That would work, but then whenever you needed to move an object, you would need t redraw the screen, which takes 40+ Tilemasking operations and screenshifts.  And display all of the objects over again.  For something like displaying a cursor in ISometric space, i think my previous method would be a lot faster. 

Also, for my previous object method, it can be drastically shortened if you don't have an object with black, clear, AND white.
It is assumed you have saved a picture of just the terrain

Clear Screen
Draw Object
Mask object with 3 overlaying landscape masks
Recall Terrain with OR

This could easily be fast enough to display an object with reasonable speed, as none of the objects are particularly taxing

Um, yeah, I don't know asm, and this project was just using xLib, so I don't think that would work.