Hi, i''ve been reading through this site about creating iso engines but none of the articles on this site are helping me much. I don''t understand how to show the map onto the screen. Any explanation in this thread or a link to a tutorial will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

You might be looking in the wrong place. If you need help on displaying the graphics, then start with help on drawing/blitting graphics. Topics such as DirectDraw should help you.

If you don''t understand the engine concept (and you already have an understanding of blitting), then there are a number of good articles on this site.

As for the engine, the concept is easy - take information that is stored in a ''map'' (an array most likely) and loop through it, drawing a ''tile'' (a section of a bitmap) at the appropriate coordinate on the screen.

Normally you would start at the top-left corner of the screen, stepping right every time you draw a tile, then dropping down on the screen and starting back at the left side to draw the next row (side-stepping a bit in case of iso drawing).



Jim Adams

1) You need to learn to draw 1 tile to the screen
2) Each different tile will be given a number
56 = black tile,
5 = stone-coloured tile
11 = grass-colouredtile
56,23,14 = water tiles
8 = Hedge tiles
3) An array will store those tile numbers
Tilearray[5][6] = {
56,23,14, 5,11, 8,
23, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5,
56,23,14, 5,11, 8,
56,23,14, 5,11, 8,
56,23,14, 5,11, 8 };

Using a loop Draw #56 then #23 #14 #5 #11 and #8 isometric tiles
then offset the next row of tiles(#23, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5) and draw them tucked underneath

Basics
http://www.lupinegames.com/articles/isoeng4u.htm
Topics on GameDev.net
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=44

ZoomBoy
Developing a 2D RPG with skills, weapons, and adventure.
See my character editor, old Hex-Tile editor, diary, 3D Art resources at
Check out my web-site

Ok thanks for the info. I made a little demo program that displays a couple isometric tiles on the screen. I''m using tiles like this:
0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0
0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0
0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,0
3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3
0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,0
0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0
0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0

but when i display them on the screen, the black part of the tiles are overlapping the tiles next to them making it look wierd. The tiles are in BMP format using the windows paint program to draw them. I''m using allegro with the masked_blit command to display the images. Any help with this would be appreciated. Thanks