Oookay. Interesting/Weird. How exactly may I interpret the image?

lol, well first =D

keep in mind these arnt exactly game shots =) they are basically engine functionality shots =)

What you are seeing, is an isometric map, with some random height values, textured with a single 64x64 repeating sand texture, with 0 ambient light and light sources, one white, one red, one green and one blue.

does that make things more clear? =D

Yeah, got it. ;) I thought as much but the colored lights confused the hell out of me. So it it going to be a 3D world filled with life by 2D images?

Isometric games rocks.

well, '3D' in the fact the isometric tiles are drawn via quads, and that it uses a 3D api to billboard the sprites, but there wont be any dynamic rotation or anything =) you might as will consider it a 2.5D game =D

I just wanted to point out the interesting little thing in the last 2 screen shots, the first shot shows 333 FPS, and the new one shows 111 FPS.

The numbers them selves are pretty cool, just to get it to have all the same digits twice.

But I'm interested you said you rewrote some of the engine, but then it shows that the FPS is 1/3 (exactly) of what it was before, is that because you have more lighting or did you somehow loose performance?

Ohhh Yeah, and I'm glad someone else asked because I thought this was going to be a 2D game as well. But I think I was reading Isometric as 2D

While im not saying this to anyone in particular, I've gotta say, the thing that bugs me the most is when people comment on FPS.

In the past i've posted screen shots, and because we at first used frame-lock framerates were read as extreamly low, the moment somone sees a low(er) framerate they jump all over it. (omg ur geam it teh suck!)

We now use time based motion (still with VSYNC) so are framerates are ususaly around 60 to whatever.

Now of course, Turt99, long time friend in development =) I am not suggesting this of you, I just felt this is a good point to make sure people know my stance, which is.

If you see that our FPS is low (or that it fluxuates) in a screen shot, dont get alarmed, and dont post about it, there is likely a very good reason for it(a common one being, running in debug mode, or with the Debug DX libraries enabled), and rest assured we are not going to release a game that goes 2FPS.

To get around to answering your question, in that screen-shot we are not yet using optimized lighting routines (proper distance occlusion checks) these optimizations will likely speed things up a bit, however much like in Morning's Wrath, this lighting model is based on ray-tracing-esq type system, wherein each vertexe's light value is based on all of the lights within range, so it is computationally expensive.

So again, FPS-maniacs out there, keep your shirts on, dont worry about the FPS we'll make sure the game runs fine in the end =)

=D

This is starting to look really intriguing. I haven't mentally connected "terrain engine" with "adventure game" in my mind before, so I'll love to see how this goes.

Yeah that was my thought as well, I am hoping it results in a 'fresh-feeling' style.

HEHE, Yeah I wasn't really posting about what the FPS really was but more so that the numbers are kinda freaky (both having all 3 digits the same)

I can't wait to see how the objects that you have shown look on a 3D landscape, this really looks like an interesting project, and I really like these puzzle type games. (Atleast untill I get stuck)

Yeah, it will be challenging (from both an implementation and a playing sense) but we'll make it look good=) I've completed two games so far in my life (the first was not released because it looked and played like holy hell) and the 2nd was lightyears ahead of the first, So I can only imagine this will be the same situation.