For Strategy Games (ie: Command and Conquer) which would be better to use. Isometric engine, hexagonal, or tile based? Thanks guys.

Isometric and hexagon are both tile based. General, for a RTS like C&C, you would use isometric, there would be almost no need at all to make hexagonal tiles because that would add extra work and look ugly for a RTS game, they are just used for TBS games.

Possibility

Don''t use either. Do what Bioware did with the Infinity
Engine. Just a flat bitmap and use real 2D movement.
This will ease you into 3D programing by forcing you to usw
2D vector math for the movement and path finding.
I wish I had done this with my engine.

Hex based is no good for real time games.
When the critters go up or down they zig zag.
This will make your aiming calculations a nightmare
if you have projectiles that fly through the air
in real time.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Davaris: Where can I read some info on doing this? I''m new, but not a total newbie. I mean I''ve done some games before (nice little Pac-Man clone, Tetris Clone, done some Mod work with Half-Life and Quake III engines, etc), just nothing like this. Anymore help would be appreciated.

I would absolutely NOT do what davaris said. For one, you cant have randomly generated maps, and you cant even have user created maps. If you want a map editor it must be made with tiles. Also should mention that tiles are faster then a large bitmap.

Possibility

>have randomly generated maps, and you cant even have user >created maps.

I haven't seen any artists that can create tile sets that blend seamlessly. However Possibility is right, strategy games do have editors as standard. So its up to you. I'm building an RPG so I don't care too much about editors for the ordinary user.

>Also should mention that tiles are faster then a large >bitmap

Not true. Depends how you blit it.

Shogun:

Check out the threads and read some of the tutorials here. There is heaps of info. There are some great books by Mickey Kawick at Amazon.com. Mickey uses tile sets but you can alter his ideas to fit the Infinity Engine model. If you don't think I know what I'm talking about check out my webpage for some screen shots (see my profile).

Dave






Edited by - Davaris on December 19, 2000 3:52:26 PM

Yes, the guy before was right.. it''s better to use a tile - based engine to do RTS games. Check my map editor at
Advanced Map Editor/ RPG Editor"

Davaris: What''s about path finding algoritm in your engine?

Davaris: What''s about path finding algoritm in your engine?

Thats easy you can just have an 2D array of points.
These are the points your creature moves towards when
he is moving through space. You just block the points
that a critter or object covers and the path finder will find its
way around the blocked points. The big pay off with the Bioware type engine is when you are resolving collisions. This code only works if you use vector math which gets really messy in tile space. Check out Dave Pottengers articles on collision resolution.