sprite order - infront or behind

smurfted

So in 2022 in Gamesalad, whats the best way of making actors with their Y axis lower on the screen be infront of those that are higher on the screen.

For isometric games this is very important, in fact for any game that has 4 planes of movement.

So a character can walk around a tree for example, but then on mass. Imagine a forest.

Armelline

Last time I did this I had two trees. One on a layer above the actor, one on a layer below the actor. Depending on the Y position of the player, the top tree showed or hid itself. So if the player was below the tree, the tree on the layer above the player would hide, allowing the player to overlap the tree ("be in front of" the tree). Once the player reached a certain Y position, the top layer tree would become visible, and the player would "be behind" the tree when they walked past it.

There's no super elegant way, really. Exactly what you need to do will depend on your exact needs. Changing the layer of an actor at run-time would be one of my biggest requests for any major GS engine updates. It's one of GS's bigget limitations.

pinkio75

Yes @Armelline for this reason games like Final Fight or Double Dragon cannot be made with GS...

Or you have to duplicate each actor like the tree thing that you did but it becomes too difficult and then you notice when you turn off one actor and turn on the other ... well even if possible better not to do it.

smurfted

Surely this is a pretty easy thing to add..

RThurman

Imagine how awesome GameSalad would be with realtime Z-order layering!

pinkio75

https://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/comment/619192#Comment_619192

Z-Order could be a great feature! for this reason game like final fight or double dragon are really hard to develop with GS.

@adent42 nothing info about this feature?

Armelline

Now they've added sounds from expressions, this is my new most-wanted feature.