Looking for an isometric Game Engine

You could check out the isometric engine FIFE built by some guys here at GDNet.

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Original post by Saruman You could check out the isometric engine FIFE built by some guys here at GDNet.

Thanks for the pointer saruman :-) I'm currently short of time because of university so I can't monitor the forums here on a regular basis anymore. Spreading the word about FIFE is more than appreciated.

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Original post by jackharmon Something Similar to Diablo II / Titan Quest / etc.

Could you please elaborate? Diablo II used an 2D engine with optional support for certain hw-accelerated features that required a modern gfx card with 3D support.

Titan quest used a real rather full-featured 3D engine. It didn't support software rendering and so the game required a modern 3D gfx card to work at all.

What are you trying to achieve? FIFE is a 2D ISO engine but features optional OpenGL support for hw-accelerated effects like alpha-blending.

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Original post by jackharmon Are there any open source ones out there? I'm not opposed to licensing one as well - so long as I can make sure it will fit my application prior.

There are not so many 2D ISO engines around, at least not many flexible ones that would work for a Diablo-like gameplay. I want to be totally upfront about this: FIFE hasn't reached the state where you can go into full development with it. So if you need a solution to start the development of your RPG as fast as possible, FIFE prolly won't suit your needs.

The lack of good 2D ISO engines was one of the reasons why we started our project from scratch instead of forking other existing projects.

The two most important 2D ISO engines I know are Kyra and GemRB:
Kyra engine
GemRB

The issue with Kyra is that it's just a sprite engine and no complete ISO game development framework. GemRB does more or less try to offer a platform for all InfinityEngine-based games. I didn't follow their development too close so I can't comment on the current state of their engine.

You can get an overview over the current state of FIFE by having a look at our roadmap:
FIFE roadmap

In general you can find all important information about the engine at our wiki:
FIFE wiki

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Original post by jackharmon I'm wanting to develop my own RPG, and use Diablo II style gameplay, but the combat system, character development, AI, etc. will all be something I design. I just need an isometric style engine ( preferrably that that allows randomization of dungeons ) since I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

As I said: FIFE isn't ready to go with it into full development at the moment. You should prolly dig through our code and see if you like the design of it or not. If you're an experienced programmer you can do this yourself, otherwhise you should prolly ask an experienced mate to take a look at the different engines and recommend one to you.

On a side note: if you want to go commercial with your game, you need to consider that kyra is released under LGPL while GemRB and FIFE are released under the GPL. That means you'll need to release your sourcecode if you did directly modify the code of the engine you had chosen.

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Original post by jackharmon Thanks!

Cheers,
barra

Thanks much for the info!

I've been doing some digging, and can't really seem to find anything to suit my needs, so I'll have to use the 3D engine I created from the ground up ( not finished by any means - but works ) and modify it to stick to an isometric view. I was hoping to find something with exact capabilities of Diablo I or II in that it was isometric and was hoping to find a package with the random dungeon generator like the one that's in Diablo I & II.

I dunno if it'll go commercial, but I'd like to keep that option open if it takes off.

Here's a link to the engine, and the old game I was cutting my teeth on.

Pics

Thanks again!

[Edited by - jackharmon on February 21, 2007 12:06:33 PM]

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Original post by Anonymous Poster It isn't open source (as far as I can tell), but here's one I've seen that looks Diablo-like: http://www.spritec.com/legacy.htm

WOW! That looks promising - gonna dig into it!

Thanks for the link!

Bummer - I can't modify the engine in that. Nice try tho!

If you're still interested in our engine, it's prolly important to know that our "lead monkey" revealed his ideas for the next major FIFE releases @ our developer blog:
Phoku's plans for the next FIFE milestones

Furthermore we're planning a GFX contest after the release of the 2007.1 milestone to bring the community into play :-)
Send them in! The FIFE community GFX contest