How would I go about level design for a tilted view city game?

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Hello there,

I was working on VehicularFun, and quickly realized that it has a STRIKING resemblance to Horde, an older project. I figured I would just spice it up a bit and change the perspective of the game, as well as the overall aesthetic. I want to go for the view that Retro City Rampage goes for, which is tilted at 45 degrees (I think?).

How would you go about this?

I was thinking of 3 things:

  • Tilemap:
    Just a bunch of tiles. Little bits of a building could be represented in it.
    Would be VERY large, and a pain to make a whole bunch of tiles. Also inefficient rendering. Do not want to go this route so far.

  • Custom Map 1:
    Make a default street grid, and have buildings inside of each ‘block,’ each having their own ID that I can edit in a file.
    This would be a DRASTICALLY smaller file, but it would look a bit reppetitive seeing the same road with the same size buildings everywhere.

  • Custom Map 2:
    Building off of #2, I could make size adjustments to blocks, such as a 1x2 block building, a 2x4 block building, a 4x5 park, etc.

What do you think I should go with?

#2

Looks don’t matter if the game plays differently :-). I suggest focusing on game play, but…

If I were to choose it’d be option 2. Chances are games will always resemble other ones. I usually don’t mind as long as it wasn’t a rip off.