Depth-sorting is solved! Z-tilting rules!

After many months wasting away, I at last came upon the final solution for depth sorting (if you don’t know what I mean by “depth sorting” see the gif above–it’s harder than it looks in 2D!).

So the answer was something called z-tilting. Essentially leveraging some 3D functionality of GameMaker to tilt the sprites. Here’s an example by the author of the method:

Since I implemented this solution, I’ve been making great progress getting PD3’s dungeon back up to speed (and beyond). Very excited to be working on gamedev again. :)