2D Top Down Isometric asset question

Hello Unreal Engine community!

During our production, we have come across a problem. The game is a top down Isometric game, Legend of Zelda: Link to the past style. The question I have is as follows:

When putting assets into the engine, for example: rocks, gates, buildings, etc. One would want the assets to have the illusion of depth based on collision. We want to create the collision boxes that when the character approaches the assets from the front, he will collide with them, but it will seem as though he is in front of them because he will have higher translucency priority than the collision section. As for the upper half of the asset, we would like to achieve the illusion of the character to be able to go behind the asset (no collision).

How would we be able to achieve this effect?
I have tested by making two different sprites: one for each section of the asset using the “Edit render geometry” tool in the sprite editor. Making the top part of the asset have a higher translucency priority than the character. Would this be the correct approach? Using this approach, you have to make multiple sprites for the same object and then crop and place them perfectly to give the illusion desired, which leads me to believe there is a better way to achieve this effect.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Pedro
goodwargames.com
Email: pguerra@goodwargames.com

bump for good measure.

  1. You raise the visual assets to a higher height so the character can go under it. (or make them no collision)
  2. You have on the same height as the character a separate collision mesh/box with the shape of the red collision area you show.

So basically have two object, one for display and one for collision.

You make this in a Blueprint for re usability, and add box collision and set it there leave sprite as is and modify size of collision to suit

You have two possible options when working with a Sprite based game.

  1. Cut the rock into two sprites with different translucent sort priorities. Top half of the rock is a 1, bottom half, -1 and player is 0.
  2. [More costly] Recalculate the translucent sort priority of the rock based on if the player is above or below it in the character’s up axis. You can also change the shape of the rock’s collision to only cover half the rock in the sprite editor.