It's sort of like a 4X version of a smaller tactics game like Advance Wars. Supply lines, region capture, unique units, etc.
It's isometric throughout, in part because I just love the aesthetics of pixel art isometric (having grown up on RTC, Age of Wonders, Simcity, Alpha Cen, Civ...).
We built a custom renderer for the game as well to support doing lots of crazy tile-layering steps that mix and match Z-depths based on various factors like specific units, terrain type, terrain decoration type, etc. Things like:
If a human soldier is on grass, the grass should be rendered on top of them, but if its a tank the grass "makes sense" to be under the tank, etc.
Art assets were based around 64x64 size tiles, and as someone else pointed out we were technically dimetric instead of isometric (as were most isometric games, dimetric feels too uniform).
Thank you! The project was a huge risk and I'm really thankful to the publisher (Modern Wolf) for believing in us enough to make it happen! At this point I just hope we're someone's favorite hidden gem :)
And credit where credit is due, the art wasn't me (I was the lead dev + creative director):
Character Art - Artyom Trakhanov
https://x.com/vor_bokor
I developed a large-scale, 2D isometric tactical strategy game called Cantata: https://store.steampowered.com/app/690370/Cantata/
It's sort of like a 4X version of a smaller tactics game like Advance Wars. Supply lines, region capture, unique units, etc.
It's isometric throughout, in part because I just love the aesthetics of pixel art isometric (having grown up on RTC, Age of Wonders, Simcity, Alpha Cen, Civ...).
This article was (and is) still the gold standard on describing isometric math: https://clintbellanger.net/articles/isometric_math/
We built a custom renderer for the game as well to support doing lots of crazy tile-layering steps that mix and match Z-depths based on various factors like specific units, terrain type, terrain decoration type, etc. Things like:
If a human soldier is on grass, the grass should be rendered on top of them, but if its a tank the grass "makes sense" to be under the tank, etc.
Art assets were based around 64x64 size tiles, and as someone else pointed out we were technically dimetric instead of isometric (as were most isometric games, dimetric feels too uniform).