Concept art time!

Early on, Tiel had a backpack because in the fic she was originally created for, she was going on an adventure along with Rick. That's why I was kinda attached to her.

Dang it. I got the math right.

The real trick now is to optimize it. It's easier to do since it's technically all 2D.

Strangely enough, of all the games I've made .exes of, this is the one that STILL works on my current computer. And sometimes, I realize I made some poor decisions in game design with this one.

Well, I was looking through some old files, and found some cool stuff.

Part one of my zany scheme for a new project worked.

Using two Views, I can draw one squished, rotatable View as a texture, meaning I can use tiles for an isometric perspective.

Now, the tricky part is where everything looks like a pop-up book.

...huh.

Didn't realize that debug mode was different on that version of Game Maker. Also shows WAY too much for players to use.

You can also click and drag some of those elements.

Here. Just to give you an idea as to what I'm going for.

The character and GFX are temporary, but they help me realize what I want to do with the engine.

Okay, so I'm doing something either crafty or questionable: drawing the objects with Draw GUI.

It works, doesn't it?

The floor's movement, being a view drawn onto a surface, is still one frame behind.

However, I figured it's more efficient to draw walls separately than to use blocks for indoor segments. They can stretch and keep doing the depth math accurately.

On one hand, I'm getting there. On another hand, "No, I'm not."

Then again, I probably forgot something important about layering the old-fashioned way, and something about using a view as a texture.