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IsoCity – Limited Functionality Demo

On 04 Sep 2011 • In Beta-Testing, DevBlog • by

SUPPORTED / TESTED BROWSERS

The demo has only been tested on desktop browsers and iPad2 running iOS 5.0, this demo is not designed for other mobile devices at present.

  • Internet Explorer 9 – Windows
  • Firefox 6 – Windows & OSX
  • Chrome 15.0.874.106 - Windows & OSX
  • Safari 5 – Windows & OSX
  • Mobile Safari – iOS5 – iPad2

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

This is a TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATION, not a complete or even partially complete game. It exists to demonstrate the capabilities of the engine.

You are currently required to log in via a Facebook account to test this demo because the demo exists to enable developers to preview the engine’s capabilities, including Facebook API integration. If you do not want to test using a Facebook account you can play around with the “offline” version of the demo which does not include multiplayer or persistent world storage here: Offline Version – No Facebook Account

Whilst the engine does not require you to use Facebook to enable multiplayer or persistent storage (Facebook integration is an optional module), the IsoCity demo is designed to use Facebook to distinguish between individual players in the realtime multiplayer world.

We understand that some users do not wish to use Facebook accounts to test tech demonstrations so the offline version above is provided for that purpose.

OPEN THE DEMO

Controls

  1. Pan with the left-mouse button or your finger.
  2. You can build anywhere but you can only move and delete objects that you placed yourself, you cannot move or delete other player’s objects.

http://www.isocity.co.uk/

IsoCity may be taken offline from time to time as we apply upgrades and server patches to the game demo.

WHAT’S NEXT

Here are some updates that we’re working on at the moment to enhance the IsoCity tech demo. Some are already complete and in testing, some are not even off the drawing board yet!

  1. Building limitations and purchasing land using in-game currency – need to work out some game mechanics to make it feel right for each player. Some interesting issues are game-logic related, such as, should we only allow you to buy land adjacent to your current owned land, or buy anywhere in the world? If anywhere, how will you keep track of all your land and buildings? Minimaps, building lists? Hmmm…
  2. Little sim people will shop at your shops and you can set the price for goods! – Watch as the money flutters up from your businesses! Working but needs further testing and tweaking to get it right. This feature is exciting since you can see the little sim-people actually walk around and shop for things they want and need. Setting your prices too low will stop you making a profit but setting them too high might cause your sim-people to shop in your neighbours shops instead!
  3. Realtime global economy – buy and sell in-game commodities that you can use to build new buildings, unlock new achievements and trade with friends and other players from all over the world!

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

If you have a great idea for how you’d like to see IsoCity expand into a real game, drop us a comment below! All ideas are welcome, including criticism. We will be turning IsoCity into a fully-fledged game over time so you can help shape the game from the early stages right now!

  • Pingback: IsoCity – Limited Functionality Demo Released - Isogenic Engine | html5 games | Scoop.it

  • T-Bone

    Nice demo. I tested it in Chrome 13 and Aurora 8.0a2
    On the screenshot you see Aurora 8.0a2.
    In both browsers there are spaces between the tiles.
    On your screenshot there are no spaces.
    Whats the reason?

    I tried to start the demo game with Firefox 5 but that
    dont work.
    There is a error message like “Firefox is configured to use
    a proxy but the server refuse the connection”
    But I dont use a proxy and any other site works fine…

    Nice to see that it works fine in Firefox >5 / Aurora.
    My isometric canvas tests results in a slide show when
    there are some animated sprites. :s

    Some news about your work?

    with best regards
    T-Bone

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Hey, thanks for letting me know about the issue in FF5, I will try to reproduce it and find the bug.

      When you said, “My isometric canvas tests results in a slide show when
      there are some animated sprites” did you mean that when you tried to use canvas to do animation  that it was very slow?
      There are some more updates to the game coming soon. The build functionality is at the top of the list but although we already have it working we cannot release it yet because there are some underlying game concepts to be worked out like “Can anyone build anywhere?” and “How much in-game resources should you get when you first sign-up to play the game?” etc etc.

      Game design is great fun but marrying the current level of technical capabilities with the grand design can be quite challenging, even for the guy that wrote both the engine and the game! :)

      • T-Bone

        Yes, the animation was very slow.
        It was frustrating so I searched and
        found your engine and decided to wait and spend my time
        to other interesting web things.

        Your engine works fine, the animations are great and
        the fps are high!

        What about the spaces between the road tiles?

        • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

          Yes, the spaces are the result of slightly different rendering techniques between Chrome 12 and 13. I didn’t see them before but I do now. I’m guessing it has something to do with sub-pixels but I haven’t spent a lot of time looking into it. I also suspect that if I removed the dithering around the edges of the road graphics they would disappear anyway.

          In Chrome 13 as well as FF6 they spaces do appear. That said, in Chrome 13 the “do not stop” junction boxes look a lot nicer! (The bits of road with yellow criss-cross lines in).

  • Jake Verbaten

    Log in with facebook.
    FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

    Seriously why do people force us to log in with arbitary social medium X. What about all those people who don’t use facebook? :(

    • T-Bone

      You´re right. I dont have a facebook account and hate those games for which you need one to play it.
      But at the moment you dont need to login to IsoCity via a facebook account. Click cancel :D
      I hope there will be a normal registration form for the game

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Hey Jake, I’m the developer of IsoCity and the Isogenic Game Engine used to build it.

      IsoCity is currently just a technology demo and as such is not by any means a completed product.

      Facebook integration is an important attribute to any web-game engine and as a technology demonstration I think that it is important to display the engine’s capabilities when interfacing with their API.

      Facebook isn’t exactly an “arbitrary” social medium though! It’s the world’s most popular one! Displaying integrated support is very important to the project.

      There is also an aspect of simplicity to bring up. When using Facebook or indeed any third-party authentication API you reduce the complexity of your code by bypassing some of the extra leg-work required to write a registration and login system specifically for a particular game.

      With all of that said, I accept that in a production environment relying on users to have Facebook accounts would be a mistake. Going forward as the demo progresses into a fully playable game Facebook login will be joined by a list of other APIs such as Twitter and potentially Disqus etc.

      The game will also have it’s own registration and login system so that there is no need to rely on third-party account access, however it is one step at-a-time here!

      I appreciate you taking the time to voice your opinion though, and rest assured that IsoCity will most definitely not be a Facebook-only game!

      • http://xant.us/ David Davis

         I think limiting it to Facebook Connect is short sighted mistake.  OpenID would have been a better authentication mech, _and_ it’s supported by Facebook. Look at the relying parties section on Wikipedia’s article on OpenID.

        • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

          Hey David, thanks for your feedback. As mentioned above it’s only the first iteration of the demo and other auth methods will be included later.

          OpenID is an obvious choice to be sure!

          • http://xant.us/ David Davis

            I realize my comment felt cold now that I read it again. :/  You guys are doing some great work – Thanks!

            • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

              Cheers buddy, don’t worry it wasn’t taken that way… all feedback is useful feedback! :)

  • BBJ

    Good stuff, thanks for all the work you are putting into this project, we are looking very much forward to trying it out once you get it ready!

    I tried the demo on Firefox 6 and although the FPS jumped quite erratically between 60 and 250, i would say the average was around 230FPS while not doing anything.
    As soon as i start doing any form of interaction though, be it movement or clicking some of the menu buttons – the FPS drops dramatically and it becomes slightly clunky.

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Thanks for the feedback! Very useful! :)

  • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

    Hey folks,

    Building has now been enabled!

  • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

    Some more major updates.

    Dirty rectangles have been enabled and the relevant debug options have been added as toggle buttons at the top right of the window.

    A new viewport has been added that will track a little sim person as they walk around the map. You can toggle that viewport on and off with the button top-right.

    Map padding has been disabled and some updates to the engine have been uploaded so that this demo takes full advantage of the latest code.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Diego-Favero/100000158361528 Diego Favero

      Hi Rob,

      I’m trying to play but nothing happens…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Diego-Favero/100000158361528 Diego Favero

    works fine now!

    Just a reload page.

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Great, thanks for letting me know. I think there are times when the Facebook API stalls when trying to contact Facebook’s servers. An error is usually thrown when that happens so I’ll write some game logic to catch that error and retry.

  • JG

    Can you say something about release date?

  • T-Bone

    There is something wrong with the stadion ;)

  • Dancedar

    Getting 9fps in Chrome 16.0.891 then toggling 2nd view jumps to 120ish, but Chrome’s FPS counter keeps around 44

  • Paulscheltema

    Hello, i was hobbying and building an iso engine also and while doing so i stumbled upon your project, so i subscribed on the updates. I just checked the demo, but i think i build one road piece and from then i could not build any more, i dont know how much im allowed to build but it still let me select pieces. Also beyond the scope of the initial viewport, it does not render extra content when moving the viewport, and again i dont know it the town is just that small or if it just doesnt render the other tiles.

    I use chrome 16.0.904.0 and i get a framerate of about 6fps with 16k draws/s, wich doesnt seem much from my own tests with the canvas.
    Also those 16k draws where only from a few moving people on the map. You could consider rendering those seperately and merge the canvas’s wich would mean only one person has to be renderd. Or if you want multiple states of those persons you could make a few of them and re-use the existing ones when the states are within for example 0.2s of eachother.

    I kind of doubt my browsers can leverate the use of my hardware, i have a 4gb 3d videocard and 8gb of ram with a quad core 2.53ghz processor eg. it shoudl be able to render this data.

    On ff 6.0.2 i get a framerate of 6fps with just near 1.5k draws/s
    also ff seems to gather more and more resources as time goes on, in just 10 minutes it gatherd near 10mb extra memory while just having the tab active and not doing anything.

    Gl with the project.

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Hi ya,

      Thanks for the feedback. A few points I’d make are:

      You should be able to build more than one road tile, there are no limits on any buildings at the moment.

      The latest stable build of Chrome is 14.something, looks like you’re using the dev channel build of Chrome which is bound to have some bugs… (http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/). I suspect the issues you were seeing with building, viewport panning and rendering are all down to the dev version of Chrome… in v14 these all work ok.

      Unless you activate Chrome’s hardware acceleration in the about:flags page, your GPU will not be used to assist with rendering (unless this is a default in the dev build?).

  • Tim

    Sorry…you want me to let your app post on my wall as if I’m saying things, just to test a demo.  No…you may not.

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Hi Tim, as stated, “We will not post anything to your wall without your consent…”. The demo has a button that allows you to open a facebook dialog that will post to your wall ONLY after you click to confirm the post.

      The permission to post to your wall is there for that reason – to demonstrate the facebook API. Remember this is a tech demo, not a real game. Displaying API capabilities is the main reason this demo exists.

  • http://www.facebook.com/manlachance Marcio Marques Soares

    i realy like your loading screen jokes keep up :P

    Still i used Chrome 14 and i get like 6-15 fps is there any way to get more fps except (buy new/upgrade pc lol) 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ednei-Nascimento/100002324805244 Ednei Nascimento

    I think the isogenic Engine amazing. I got the license premium. I wait for future updates. thank you

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Thanks for your comment and for supporting our business by purchasing a premium license! Lots of exciting updates are on their way! :)

  • dionvdc

    Saw the interview on T.net, like the idea and wanted to see a demo.
    Went to this site to read you needed a FB account.
    Stopped reading and caring after I red that.
    What’s the deal with FB here, I don’t use social media to play a game.

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Hey there, thanks for your comment. The demo is just a tech demo, not a full game so it exists to demonstrate the capabilities of the engine which includes Facebook integration.

      Agree that when a real version of the game is released that relying on users to register and play via Facebook is a mistake but for now, it is only here to demo the capabilities of the engine.

      If you want to test without a Facebook account, we have provided an “offline” version at http://www.isogenicengine.com/offline/iso_city/

      Appreciate your response as I also don’t like to log in via Facebook for gaming and when this demo is ready to be considered an actual game, other login options will be made available.

  • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

    IsoCity has been updated, moving and deleting objects is now enabled, plus support for the iPad2 under iOS 5 is now live.

    You can still build anywhere but you can only move or delete objects that you have built yourself, you cannot move or delete other player’s objects.

  • Anonymous

    When I saw the demo isogenic Engine had several ideas. I would like to build a game similar to classic Monopoly that allows the player to build houses, buildings and trades them with other players. The great detail is that the game takes place in mycountry and my royal city. The isogenic engine could import some information fromGoogle Maps in real time and adds them in the game, as the names of streets and shops that exist in real life.
    Could at least import the shape of a real city streets, and from there players buy landand build your business.
    The owner of the game could negotiate with Owners of actual companies and banneradvertisements within the game, in order to get sponsors to keep the game online.
    I live in the city of Buzios, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and would love to create a game called ”Búzios City” to promote my hometown and also local traders.

    Thank you.

  • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

    Updated, added a loading progress bar.

    OH – PS – If you haven’t already, download the latest version of Chrome (15.0.874.106) – it is hardware accelerated by default and is REALLY SUPER FAST.

  • Meg

    I would suggest the ability to click and drag to place multiple sidewalks and roads, if that’s something that’s possible. 

    Also I noticed that the online version of the game seemed kind of flickery/unresponsive while the offline version worked fine. My current connection is pretty spotty so that’s probably related, but I wonder if it would be possible to show placed buildings/roads/etc client-side without waiting for a confirmation from the server that it was placed successfully (if that is what’s happening). Then if this assumption was wrong it could simply disappear after the server responds (or fails to respond). This approach seems to be used a lot in other online games and I’m guessing that unless you had a lot of people building in the same IsoCity at once, there wouldn’t be too many issues with that kind of assumption. 

    When I’m dragging the map around, tiles don’t load until I let go of the mouse button. This is pretty immersion-breaking for me, especially since characters that walk into unloaded but visible areas will disappear completely. Same goes for the terrainless black border if you scroll out too far at once. Mostly this is a problem when I accidentally drag outside of the map area and everything gets “stuck” until I click the map again. 

    Please don’t take this comment too negatively; I know there’s a lot of criticism here but I only bother posting it because the engine seems to have so much promise. I’ve been toying with an idea for an HTML5 isometric game that I think would be a perfect fit for this engine, if I ever get around to it. Cheers and good luck!

    • http://www.isogenicengine.com Rob Evans

      Thanks Meg!

      The game does indeed wait for a server-side response before allowing the items to be placed on the map and the engine is capable of displaying a client-side item first and then waiting for confirmation so it is probably something that will make its way to the IsoCity demo at some point :)

      The map dragging only renders data “outside” of the visible range of the viewport once the mouse is let go, however you can turn off this feature (a performance feature mostly for iPad) by clicking the “VP Clipping” button then dragging the map. This turns off the clipping which is done to the rendering system.

      The black outline around the map is another option inside the engine’s viewport system. At the moment it is set to ‘padding = 0.5;’ This basically means that half the viewport’s dimensions extra will be rendered around the map. You can easily set this to 1 to remove the black outlines when dragging further… again, an iPad optimisation. These are settings that we will turn on and off depending upon the device / browser loading the game in the future but they are just default values for now.

      You can actually edit the padding / rendering system in realtime. If you open your browser JS console and type:

      client.toggleViewportClipping();
      ige.viewports.byIndex[0].panLayer.padding = 1;
      ige.viewports._doAutoResize();

      Then when you drag the map around you will see the map rendered without being redrawn once the mouse drag is complete. The engine is designed to be VERY versatile when providing options like this and there are many fun toggles and tweaks that you can do from the JS console to play with the engine some more.

      Really appreciate your feedback! :)

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