Isometric Game with 2D assets?

Is it possible? I am aware that it is easily done by using 3D assets, but is it possible by using 2D assets?

Since I’m quite new to Unity, I’m not so familiar with using 2D assets. Anyways if it is possible could you provide some insight or help on the matter?

::Edit::

Maybe I should’ve rephrased the question a bit… The problem ain’t the camera but using the sprites as graphics and the fact that the game would be tile-based.

Some longer run problems could be that how I could restrict the player’s movement to follow the tiles, collision detections and so on and on.

If you are using an orthogonal camera (as I suspect you are) and 3d geometry (planes) for sprites, you can determine their drawing order by simply moving them away or towards the camera an arbitrary amount of units. The depth buffer will take care of the rest. Since it is orthogonal the sprites will still show up on the exact same spot and with the exact same scale on the screen.

Other than that, there is no simple way to determine drawing order of geometry with same depth, to the best of my knowledge. If you had to do it, and if you have Unity Pro, you could define several “layers” your sprites will go into, then make a different shader with different queueing information for each layer.

The reason your .png sprite does not show transparent areas is the material. Go to the plane that has your sprite assigned and instead of “Diffuse” make it a “Transparent Diffuse” material. That way the sprite will show up transparent areas correctly. For some reason the asset preview window ignores transparency (most likely because “alpha channel” is used for a lot more than transparency by Unity’s shaders).

Yes you can create 2d isometric games with Unity. It’s camera allows for the adjustments to suit that style of game. It also uses a grid, so you can do snapping to the grid or to adjoining objects. You can use 2d textures on 3d planes and snap and drop 2d textures into place.

Like Masaruath, I am trying to evaluate Unity for 2D Isometric games too. drChengele’s response does not seem to answer the question of whether or not one can use 2D assets with Unity to make 2D Isometric games.

Does anyone have any suggestions and pointers for whether or not I can use 2D assets to make 2D Isometric games using Unity? Thanks.

The answer is absolutely yes.

There are MANY 2D sprite assets in the asset store, in addition to a good free one.
They are all relatively cheap too, ranging from $30-$50.
The only one that isn’t cheap is SM2 which is $150, and I don’t recommend that as the price hasn’t changed despite its competition.

Also, Unity is attempting to implement 2D animation and sprites into its engine, although they seem to keep pushing that feature back and not caring so much for it (probably due to the overwhelming amount of 2D sprite animation packs for sell in the asset store).

Still, for free or for $30-$50, you can create and implement sprite sheets, which use calculated/created meshes based on the size you are wanting the sprite to be, which can all support collidors and such.

If you want to have tile systems, not only is Unity capable (Unity is capable of anything, really) but there are also relatively cheap tile packages. From what I know of, there is a tile system and unitile, which are two different assets for a tile based system.

Movement, you’d have to code that yourself, but it’s no harder than any other game feature.

Unity3D engine can do anything you need it to do, because it’s all programming in the end.