width/height. top down view sim. depth

[everfornever]

Hi guys.

Well I just finished up some jobs and now begining back progress on my top down rpg, I have got alot done, but now I am running into some tricky things with my maps.

First, I wont get into alot of stuff or reasons why I am doing certain things, but here is my question.

I want my maps to be hilly, you can see by the picture below.



and I am trying to think of ways to increase/decrease player size depending on the hills on my flat map.

now one Idea, pretty much the only idea I had so far was something like this.

create either a black and white or color layer to lay under my maps, and use some sort of get color method to see what color player is standing on, I figured go black and white so I could use something like....

if color is increased so is player scale, and if color is decreased so is player scale...

anyone ever attempted anything like this before?

here is an example of the above tile map with what I am talking about.


I know I would have to get more precise, but this is just an example

Now to me this sounds like the most logical way of doing such a thing but thought maybie someone here as tried this before?

any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated,,,, thank you.

[renderhjs]

http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Heightfield

used in Flash
http://lab.parkstudio.ru/terra/

the trick is to show it from a different perspective, other than from plain top (that would hide the depth difference).

try some simple perspective shifting along the x-axis rotation just like Command % Conquer 1 & 2 or the Total Annihilation game. Seeing it slightly from the side and the top allows you then to slide the characters & items along the y-axis in flash to fake height & depth.


software:
http://terraineer.sourceforge.net/
http://www.world-machine.com/gallery.html
http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=8
http://www.localblooddrive.co.uk/

[VENGEANCE MX]

Everfornever, I'd say just make a grayscale version of the map, and use getPixel() to find the colour of the point the player's standing on. Then just convert the colour value to a number; the bigger it is, the bigger the player should be. The range should be from 0 to 0xffffff (16,777,215).

[Q__Hybrid]

I have nothing against per-pixel calculations and heavy use of BitmapData, I wish more could be done without sacrificing framerate on lower-end machines. But if you want to simplify your engine so that it runs quickly, try using points nested within your terrain instead of another layer of graphics.

What I'm saying is, I think if you mapped out the summit of each hill and calculated proximity, you could achieve similar (if not the same) results.

[everfornever]

all very good points, just the kind of responses I was looking for, this gives me two things to play with now, I will see how the getPixel works since I want it to be extremely accurate, but I do undestand the point Q made.

Thank you guys. I am still working on the map itself at this point, but I will let you know the progress. If your curious how things are progressing check my current project in my sig.

[mr_malee]

i dont follow Q_Hybrid, simply using getPixel on a astatic bitmap shouldn't effect performance at all, its just a lookup isn't it?

ever, i'd do what V said, full white should be the highest point possible, black being the lowest. Then simply find the percentage of gray you're at

var maxHeight = 200;
var color = heightMap.getPixel(hero._x, hero._y) >> 24 & 0xFF
var height = (color / 255) * maxHeight

hero._xscale = hero._yscale = height

[VENGEANCE MX]

heightMap.getPixel(hero._x, hero._y) >> 24 & 0xFF

Showoff.