3D Side Scrolling

[noanswer42]

Hi everyone. I am really new to Flash, and I went ahead and bought a book about Flash Game Design (Flash MX Game Design Demystified). I really have a good idea for a side-scrolling shooter. But I feel I need to add a slight bit of 3D perspective/angle to it.

I basically want to change the environment a bit so that, let's say, a box will look like a cube instead of a square on the screen. Now of course, apply that to the entire environment ( not the characters ). I assume this can be achieved through drawing at a certain angle--but what I think might be a problem (I don't know), is that the characters would collide [stop] with the wall or object at the front-most edge, instead of actually hitting the wall where it would happen in a 3D environment.

In my book, it talks about isometric worlds, and the files that go along with the chapter seem to mimic the effect I want, but I don't want everything to be isometric (I, again, assume that there is only one style of isometry which follows those exact angles). I don't want the character to change depth at any time...this is where I lose my thoughts and start getting confused. Is there any simple solution? Can anyone here help me? Am I making no sense whatsoever? Or is my idea totally impossible?

It's really hard to describe, I have drawings though that would explain this more. I'm sorry this is really vague and confusing and I have no code or anything to back it up.

Thanks in advance for any help at all.

[Webforumz Staff]

So you want an isometric world, but with your character 'flat' against it from the viewer's perspective? Wouldn't that give the character a 45 degree tilt or something?

Regardless, I don't have the necessary knowledge to build a 3d engine to do this, but I would assume that an isometric viewpoint would be enough - you could just add your character and make it 'look' normal and not isometric? The effect would be the same?

[noanswer42]

Well that's the thing, I'm not sure if want I am thinking can be considered isometric, it wouldn't be viewed from the same angle. Hmm...I can't explain this.

Basically, I am asking if anyone knows whether I should simply draw everything as if looking from a certain angle, and then use some trick to pull off the collision detection, or if I should actually go through the trouble of making a system of code that achieves something with the same effect of isometry (without making it officially isometric). Would the latter help me in any way?

[Webforumz Staff]

I don't believe it would. Besides it would be much easier to simply do it the first way...

[noanswer42]

Okay thanks for the help, it is beginning to make more sense now.