Isometric View Game

Is it possible to create isometric view game like farmville, cityville, etc in Unity3d using 2D art? I am not talking about using 3d models and controlling the camera angle to achieve an isometric look.

 

It is possible, but the easiest way to do it would be to do exactly what you said you didn't want to do.
Make an orthographic camera point in an isometric angle.

 

yep

 

If you tell us what problems might arise from using an orthographic camera and 3D models, maybe we can give you suggestions on how to get around them. The only obvious reasons I can see right now are (1) you don't know how/want to create 3D models, (2) you prefer a hand-painted look (which in my opinion doesn't age as bad as 3d models and would therefore make perfect sense) or (3) all the 2D assets already exist.

 

You right about the first reason. I only have friends that can help me with 2d art. Also is it a bit of a overkill to create 3d models for isometric purpose which requires more time and money to make?

 

I would think that using simple 3D models would be cheaper then re-drawing every single frame of an animation.

 

You can use 2D art to get an isometric game style in a few different ways. One way would be to use an isometric camera, and put your 2D art on "flats". Point the camera along one axis, and lay out your flats on the other two axes. You will still probably want to position your flats in z-space because then you get the depth sorting for free, with flats closer to the camera being drawn on top of flats further away from the camera.

Another way would be to just use the GUI.DrawTexture() commands and do it all on the GUI side of things. I wouldn't recommend this approach, but it would probably work if you don't get too crazy with the amount of drawing.

Still a third way would be to do a combination of 3D and 2D. You could make 3D models for the isometric "ground" tiles - something that probably won't be too difficult to model since they'd mostly be just cubes - but then use flats for all the characters and items that get put into the 3D space. This would give you something along the lines of what you see in Final Fantasy Tactics, for instance.

 

Thanks for the detailed input.