Just wondering what tile format people are using. I''m using 64x32 tiles with the upper row being completely transparent. Actually, I''m guessing that most people are using this format too. But lately I''ve been wondering why. I''ve been looking for ways to map the pixels of a square image to the pixels of an isometric tile of this format. Unfortunately, I have only found ways to map a 16x16 pixel image to the tiles. Is there a particular reason why this form of tile is so popular? Could is be because its symmetric shape (horizontally and vertically) makes it easier to create tiles? I''ve stumbled on something interesting that I thought I might share. The following linear transformation seems to map a 32x32 image into an isometric tile: |1 0.5| |-1 0.5| However the tile that results has its leftmost column transparent. It is neither symmetric horizontally or vertically, yet renders fine in an isometric engine. It also provides an algorithm to convert flat tiles to isometric tile (although there are many ways to do this already). Cheers

Just a quick correction. The resulting tile after applying the linear transformation is symmetric horizontally but not vertically.

Hi Cannon.

Me & a friend of mine are (more & less) working on a game engine, using the tile engine. We have 16x16 tiles... why ? Well, 8x8 is too small (even though you can variate more.. but Its just not worth the size that the map would take instead).. 32 x 32 is too big for our games... we are actually programming in DJGPP in DOS and in VGA mode, which makes 32x32 a bit too big when making levels. I suppose it would be nice when doing sprites but we havent got that far yet, so we''re still using the tileset for the "sprites" as well.

Check out http://home.bip.net/encore under GENG, if you would like to know more. There''s also a link to my friend''s homepage(first link) and also a game he & I (mostly him) have made with it.. the game is pretty slow but this was before I got my lazy ass going and wrote the routines in ASM. :-)

/// encore