OffscreenInvisibleComponent limitations in Isometric / Orthogonal

[DeathPhoenix22]

Hi,

I've recently tried to use the OffscreenInvisibleComponent and notice really quickly that it supports only flat 2D games (TopDown or Scrollers). In my case, I'm using an Orthogonal perspective (I'll possibly switch to Isometric one day).

What I noticed is the use of the boundingBoxComponent to define limits of an entity. Normally, the BoundingBox should fit, but the Collisions system is also using the bbox to define collision patterns.

I then realized that: There are 2 natural boundaries to any Entity in any game using Entities in a perspective angle:

1. The Collision Box
2. The Texture Box

For the sake of backward compatibility and simplicity, I've defined, in my game, that the current BoundaryComponent will be used as designed (for Collisions).

I've therefor written a new Component that I called "VisibilityComponent" responsible for doing what the OffscreenInvisibleComponent was doing, but using what I called the "entity viewport".

@AlmasB I could integrate my changes simply by integrating a new method to the existing OffscreenInvisibleComponent that can be overriden. It would basically return the EntityViewport (by default the bbox of the boundingBoxComponent) so it would be 100% backward compatible. Then, games could redefine what does "Offscreen" mean by overriding the getEntityViewport(..) method.

Do you want me to PR this?

Thanks,

[AlmasB]

Yes you are right. The two boxes are usually known as: logical bounds and visual bounds.

Perhaps we can avoid overriding and instead provide a way of getting the visual bounds from ViewComponent. The logical bounds would be the default and would match existing behaviour.

component.setBoundsType(BoundsType.VISUAL); would use ViewComponent to define the bounds, rather than BoundingBoxComponent

I assume you calculate visual bounds based on the texture attached to an entity? Is this something that can be generalised and/or obtained from JavaFX (I am thinking layout bounds) for a general view represented by a collection of Nodes?