I'm making an isometric Minecraft game, and I don't know how to handle visibility. This video is filmed in actual Minecraft but it shows the problem, although because of bugs sometimes the player is visible underground. Does anyone have any ideas?

Interesting concept! I'd say when the player goes underground, it goes into an “X-Ray” mode like how actual minecraft does you go into spectator mode and go inside the ground.

dude341 wrote:

Interesting concept! I'd say when the player goes underground, it goes into an “X-Ray” mode like how actual minecraft does you go into spectator mode and go inside the ground.

I thought of that, but especially with a large world in isometric projection the player can still get covered up. It might work though.

cuddley wrote:

dude341 wrote:

Interesting concept! I'd say when the player goes underground, it goes into an “X-Ray” mode like how actual minecraft does you go into spectator mode and go inside the ground.

I thought of that, but especially with a large world in isometric projection the player can still get covered up. It might work though.

Yes, that could happen, especially if there is a lot of mines/veins in the ground, these mines in X-Ray mode could cover up the player. Perhaps to solve this, do not render mines/veins in X-Ray mode that “are in a layer above” the player (I know isometric rendering/angles doesn't really work that way but I mean anything that would generally cover up the player), in order to be able to see the player fully. Doing that may cause gameplay problems though, like it being hard to find mines you've previously mined.

dude341 wrote:

cuddley wrote:

dude341 wrote:

Interesting concept! I'd say when the player goes underground, it goes into an “X-Ray” mode like how actual minecraft does you go into spectator mode and go inside the ground.

I thought of that, but especially with a large world in isometric projection the player can still get covered up. It might work though.

Yes, that could happen, especially if there is a lot of mines/veins in the ground, these mines in X-Ray mode could cover up the player. Perhaps to solve this, do not render mines/veins in X-Ray mode that “are in a layer above” the player (I know isometric rendering/angles doesn't really work that way but I mean anything that would generally cover up the player), in order to be able to see the player fully. Doing that may cause gameplay problems though, like it being hard to find mines you've previously mined.

I'm not not sure how this would be implemented and also in a large world the ground covers the underground, which is why you can't see it normally. Because isometric projection effectively just scrolls the image to move the camera, I can't really put the camera “inside” a block like in spectator mode, and even if I could I would need to change the engine to cull faces in the same way, which would cause slowdown. It's a good idea but I'm not sure how to implement it.

cuddley wrote:

dude341 wrote:

cuddley wrote:

dude341 wrote:

Interesting concept! I'd say when the player goes underground, it goes into an “X-Ray” mode like how actual minecraft does you go into spectator mode and go inside the ground.

I thought of that, but especially with a large world in isometric projection the player can still get covered up. It might work though.

Yes, that could happen, especially if there is a lot of mines/veins in the ground, these mines in X-Ray mode could cover up the player. Perhaps to solve this, do not render mines/veins in X-Ray mode that “are in a layer above” the player (I know isometric rendering/angles doesn't really work that way but I mean anything that would generally cover up the player), in order to be able to see the player fully. Doing that may cause gameplay problems though, like it being hard to find mines you've previously mined.

I'm not not sure how this would be implemented and also in a large world the ground covers the underground, which is why you can't see it normally. Because isometric projection effectively just scrolls the image to move the camera, I can't really put the camera “inside” a block like in spectator mode, and even if I could I would need to change the engine to cull faces in the same way, which would cause slowdown. It's a good idea but I'm not sure how to implement it.

That's the only issue I can think of: it probably will be hard to implement.