Oh ya, and the tiles are diamond shaped.

There actual isometric tiles.

Thanks again,

Da_KiD

Hey, I've programmed my basic isometric engine in directx. Right now, it plots tiles, calculates the mouse isometric coords, and scrolls.

I am tryin to add slopes now. I made the graphics already in 3d studio max, but i'm not quite sure how i should go about doin the slopes.

The First way is to create layers, and then stack the tiles, and i'm tryin to figure out if there is a faster or better way of doing this.

I want my engine to look like SimCity3000's or RollerCoaster Tycoon's engine.

Thanks in advance,

Latez,

email - datisme@notme.com

Da_KiD

If your engine blits tiles onto the screen, then you have to simulate the slope with a cleverly drawn/rendered tile (one that will be larger, vertically, than a normal tile). One of the advantages of a diamond-tile shape is that to add height, you can simply add to (subtract from if 0,0 is top-left) the Y value. [So a point part way up in location 10,10 within a tile would be 10,10-up]. This method requires clever art, but can run very quickly. I'd recommend any of the normal isometric tutorials found in the programming section of this site for the basics of this - just remember that a sloped tile is like any other tile, done with graphics designed to fool the viewer into seeing a slope.

The alternative approach (and my favourite, by a long way) is to use textured polygons for tiles. That way, you simply need to draw the texture, and manipulate the vertices to ensure that the tile is in the right place - the texture then follows the tile. A slope, for example, can be achieved by offseting the Y value of relevant points of the tile. I do this in Direct3D using DrawPrimitive (it also lets me light the scene, which is pretty handy). This is much easier on the artist, but requires a heftier machine (at least one that accelerates polys if you want to use a reasonably high resolution). I don't know what to recommend in the way of reading for this approach - if you email me, I can send you some samples I guess. (I'm writing for PII-233 or higher with at least a voodoo 1, though)