Virtual Party Space Devlog #10: Rendering isometric tiles

Today I struggle with videoconference connections and look into isometric rendering and pathfinding for the game interface.

Log

• spent 4 hours trying to figure out why videobridge wasn’t connecting
  • turns out I made a poor choice to use host.docker.internal in docker .ENV, which doesn’t work. Replaced with IP RESOLVED
• tested with 2 users, mostly works fine

UI/Game

• made isometric depth work
  • load tilesets as spritesheets instead of images, load each tile individually
  • Algorithm: depth = x + y + (base depth for foreground objects)
    • means depth increases evenly on the diagonal
    • causes irregular results if player character is sharing same tile as another object (layered objects should be blocking)
• looked into pathfinding to enable mouse navigation/find-my-friend
  • Easystar library Looks like a good option

About this series

Back in mid-December I started an ambitious project to create a custom platform for a virtual birthday party in February. I kept notes on my progress, both for personal reference and to turn into a series of blog posts. It quickly became apparent that I did not have time to both do the project and blog about the project. I have retroactively decided to post my raw notes as a dev log.