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[mirosurabu]

I have decided to use the top-down perspective for one of my ideas I am about to prototype. Since I want it to look decent visually, I am confronting the style issue.

What kind of different art styles are there for top-down (bird's eye) perspective? I am not looking for photo-realism, but rather for something stylistic and in the best case simple enough.

I've been searching on the net but I couldn't find anything.

So, tigers, suggestions and pictures are welcome.

[Ivan]

The Chaos Engine:





GTA1:



GTA2:



Blood Omen:

[___]

The Chaos Engine is hotness, DAMN.

[michael]

most topdown games use a fake perspecive, like all those 2d rpgs, because a true topdown view is usually not able to convey enough inforamtion. things look kinda borning in my opinion. the upside is that everything can be rotated so you wont need to draw different angles.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

a few more styles you may want to look into, each are pretty distinct:

paladin's quest, zelda 3, final fantasy 6, secret of evermore, secret of mana, etc.

getting perspective right is difficult in this perspective, but no more difficult than, say, platform (side-view) perspective, which also alters stuff unnaturally to fit its view. pretty much any 2d perspective will require some unrealistic things in order to look and play well.

[sergiocornaga]

I thought The Minish Cap looked pretty good for a game where the perspective was completely wrong half the time, if not all the time.

[AuthenticKaizen]

beside the already mentioned games you may take a look at this impressive Multi-Directional Shooter Master List which covers hundreds of shooters of many many different systems! (most of them are top down games)
(kudos to neist the maker of this list)
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pvwYx0Skw-Q3i-BwhcOfKKg&gid=0


moreover...these games havent been mentioned yet:

zombies ate my neighbours (snes)
http://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/zombies-ate-my-neighbors




jurassic park (snes)
http://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/jurassic-park____




pocky & rocky (snes)
http://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/pocky-rocky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKdYY6dwXhw

goof troop (snes)
http://www.mobygames.com/game/snes/goof-troop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnYvDAPszIw

shock troopers (arcade)
http://www.mobygames.com/game/neo-geo/shock-troopers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA1x7vDuS54

[Soulliard]

The big question here is whether or not you want a pure top down view, or an angled/isometric view. Angled views generally look much better, but you need to make separate sprites for each direction an object could face. A top down view takes much less work, since you can just rotate the sprites, but generally looks bad, since we're not used to viewing things from that angle. If you are going to make a game with a top down view, I'd recommend that your subject matter is something people are used to viewing from above, like insects.

[Chris Z]

All excellent examples, and now I wanna play Minish Cap again.

You could also consider the isometric perspective:

Crusader No Remorse


Populous

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Those are isometric, not top-down (there's kind of a difference).

[Chris Z]

Yea I pointed that out in my post.  I didn't see the OP rule that out so 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Ah, didn't see that.

As an aside, I find isometric perspective the hardest to program. Not *that* difficult, but certainly not as intuitive as side-view or top-down. So I wouldn't recommend programming an isometric game unless math is your strong suit, I had a lot of problems when trying to create an isometric layout.

[Chris Z]

Ah, didn't see that.

As an aside, I find isometric perspective the hardest to program. Not *that* difficult, but certainly not as intuitive as side-view or top-down. So I wouldn't recommend programming an isometric game unless math is your strong suit, I had a lot of problems when trying to create an isometric layout.

Yea, it introduces a lot of issues you normally wouldn't run into with square tiles.  You still run into some of this stuff by introducing any kind of perspective.  I remember this book being really good when I was a game development scrub, it has DX7 in the title but the graphics API is kind of irrelevant.

[mirosurabu]

It's easy to do isometric view today thanks to 3D graphics hardware acceleration. Doing isometric view in 2D can be hard, I guess.

Regarding my topic - I'm interested in stylistic GTA-style perspective. Though, it's okay this way as well - I was thinking about using isometric perspective.

Stylistic, abstract, minimalistic or just a bit different. Some examples:

Mirror Stage abstract art:


Atic Atac retro style:


KM3


Grandle-Unison


Noiz2sa

[JLJac]

You could also consider the isometric perspective:

Actually I think that'll be hard to program, since the isometric view needs some kind of 3D code to work properly. Some of them actually are 3D, I remember when I played alien shooter:



I got extremely surprised when I saw the weapon stick through a door, it went through it like polygons intersecting, not like sprites being layered. After some playing around I came to the conclusion that the game actually was some kind of odd russian 3D

Also, GTA2 is full 3D, except from the characters. I think it's hard to work with top-down view, since the 3D-effect is harder to fake than in the side view where you can just put some slowly scrolling layers behind everything. With the top-down view you have to make it somewhat isometric, make it 3D or come up with some other solution if you don't want your levels to be extremely flat.

[JasonPickering]

i always liked the zelda approach. look at VGmaps they will really help you.

(Huge Picture)
http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GB-GBC/LegendOfZelda-Link'sAwakeningDX-Koholint.png

www.vgmaps.com check out any of the zelda stuff on NES, SNES, and gameboy.

[Chris Z]

i always liked the zelda approach. look at VGmaps they will really help you.

(Huge Picture)
http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/GB-GBC/LegendOfZelda-Link'sAwakeningDX-Koholint.png

www.vgmaps.com check out any of the zelda stuff on NES, SNES, and gameboy.

Oh wow that site rocks, brought back so many memories.  Reminds me of how Nintendo Power and Gamepro would always map out levels in games. 

[agj]

[mirosurabu]

Thanks.  Funny I didn't consider building plans as possibility. (considering I am doing one at the moment)

The last one looks interesting too.

[agj]

That's Hotel Dusk: Room 215. It's a very pretty game.