Walls: how to make them disappear (isometric view)?

Hi,

I’m creating a dungeon game with an isometric 3rd person view to the character. If I place higher walls without any dead zones I’m not able to visit every place on the map as a lot of space is hidden by those walls.

Now I’m looking for a good (or best) practice to hide those walls (or any other asset) without changing the camera view. Of course I looked at other games, so here is what I currently see as options:

  1. replace these “high” assets with “lower” ones

  2. add transparency to the asset/material and allow look (and click) through

  3. just remove them if they interfere (might lead to flickering?)

  4. plan levels without borders :wink:

From look and feel perspective I’d like to implement something like solution 1 (I’m really fascinated how this works in Diablo IV).

So, my guess for implementation would be:

  • Split assets into two or three parts:
    • foundation (base) at the bottom, always stays visible and is low enough to never block/hide view to character or points to click
    • regular upper part which looks nice and is visible as long as the character is not too close
    • [optional] a kind of stump that replaces the regular upper part (optional as it might be part of the foundation and hidden by the regular upper part?)
  • setup a blueprint which combines bottom und upper part with some kind oflogic that hides the upper part if character is close enough

If I stick to this approach, I’d need to create at least 2 meshes per related asset. But how would I implement the blueprint? What’s the magic to tell it when to show / hide the upper part?

Any ideas on that topic? Am I completely wrong? All comments are welcome!