Using Pre-made pixel art for a 2.5D game
Hello,
I'm new to the forum and have been reading tutorials, old posts, and the manual but still, have a couple of questions. I hope I don't sound too stupid or am asking an obvious question that I missed.
I am making a 2.5D game similar to the MegaMan Battle Network Series games. This is an example of the kind of map the game would use: http://www.sprites-inc.co.uk/files/EXE/EXE4/Maps/RealWorld/ACDC.gif
Would there be a way to import a premade pixel art map like this as is and then set a NavMesh so it can properly interact with characters? Or would I have to find some way to break it up into tilesets in order for it to work?
Thanks for any insight and sorry again if I am just missing an obvious thing, I'm an artist more than a programmer.
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Welcome to the community, @CyberAxl.
I'm not familiar with the Battle Network Series, but the example you've shown isn't 2.5D in the same sense that AC uses the term. In AC, 2.5D is all about having characters move in 3D space (so that they're perspective correct) while relying on 2D art for the backgrounds. The isometric map you've shown would be more suited to a pure 2D game, so far as AC goes.
For 2D, AC's default pathfinding method involves making a NavMesh using Unity's Polygon Collider 2D component. Technically, this is separate from the graphics that it relates to. The artwork underneath, and the NavMesh that describes movement around it, are not connected to one another in a technical sense.
You should be able to get most of the way there following the standard 2D workflow, as covered by the 2D tutorial.
The main sticking point I think you will find, however, is that of getting objects within the scene to appear correctly in relation to the characters. That is, if the player is in front of the house, he should be drawn on top, and vice-versa.
This is a typical issue when it comes to 2D games, and AC gets around this by using Sorting Maps, which tell its characters how their "Sorting Order" values on their Sprite Renderers should change as they move vertically around a 2D scene.
This is typically enough for "pure" 2D games, but things get tricky when you move to a 2D isometric view, because it's not so simple to determine when a character is "in front" of an isometric house, for example.
However, Unity has recently introduced their own Tilemapping features, which do appear to handle the issue of sprite-sorting automatically. I'd recommend doing some experimenting with it, but this visual issue would be separate to that of the NavMesh. You could, for example, import the map as one large image, create the NavMesh, and start implementing gameplay - and then replace the single image with a Tilemap later on.
@ChrisIceBox thanks so much for your response! You addressed a lot of my concerns! I'll see how well importing the map with navmesh goes to get a general idea to test it out as you mentioned. Then I'll know when creating art in the future to make it a tilemap style!