2.5D game question

Development
1

Hi everyone :smiley:

I have a few questions regarding JMonkey and a 2.5D game in particular :

Okay, I have a game project where I’m trying to replicate an old RPG game called Silver. In this game, you basically have prerendered backgrounds and all the dynamic elements are 3D models layered on top of that. Here’s a relevant screenshot:

I’ve made some research and it seems a simple approach would be to have the background in a first layer, and then have a simplified, invisible 3d mesh of the background layered on top of it (which would contain among other things a rough modeling of the rock, the tree in the middle of the screenshot and the bridge in the top right corner for example) so that we would have collisions and distance from the camera. And lastly, we would have the game models on that invisible 3d mesh.

Now the question I’m asking is what is the best way to make relevant parts of the background overlap or not with the player models? eg. how to make the tree “cover” a model when the model is behind it (remember that we just have a 2D background image)?

Is this approach any good? Moreover, is it possible to do that in jmonkey engine?

Thank you very much in advance :mrgreen:

2

Just layer a few textured quads over each other. And maybee use a custom geometrycomparator, to define in wich order stuff is rendered, if you need some special cases.

Background -> skybox
Tree normal 3d models
person as well,
distance to camera would b ethe usualy wich gets drawn over others logic.

That way you get almost everything for free.