Interpretation from Flat to Isometric

[nivram]

Fudge. Over the years discussions on this have been ongoing, I have never seen a proper way to do it though.

Let's reference a .mfa that I have on my website:

Random Map Generation Example
Author: modified by nivram
Genre: Example
Extensions Needed: None
Description:
Create a new world each time you play your game. This example has grass, mountains, snow, trees, and chests. Original coding by pirate and I added grass, snow, trees, and chests. The world is now 800X600.
Instructions:
Run the mfa then click the left mouse button.


Link:
http://castles-of-britain.com/random...ionexample.mfa


Let's say we have the random map generator out of the frame. What I would like to do is this:
As the generator is making a map off the frame, on the frame interpret the flat map to Isometric or 2/3


Your thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and examples would be appreciated. In my current state I would also appreciate being classified as a noob on this.


Thanks,


Marv

[EE]

Hmm, cool!
I'd have it tilebased and move the background instead of the character.
Have one screen with tiles made of actives and one-two rows extra outside the playfield, analyzing a corresponding square of tiles on the map and updating the border tiles when needed.

[MuddyMole]

Honestly, I wouldn't be starting from there. I'd make it tile-based like EE says, and keep everything in an array while generating the map - only adding tiles to the backdrop after all the processing is done, and obviously have everything fastlooped so the map is generated instantly. You could use virtual scrolling (where the frame size is the same as the window size) like EE suggests, but it does make some things a lot more complicated, so unless the maps are going to be absolutely huge, I'd just make the frame size the same as the map size instead.

I have a random terrain generator example here:
http://www.sketchy.co.nf/
That version only uses only two terrain values (0=water; 1=land), but the same method (cellular automata) could easily be adapted so the values represent altitude (0=water; 1=grassland; 2=hill; 3=mountain; etc), and then do something similar for vegetation etc.

[Konidias]

Well yeah you're going to need some numbers generated for height of things also... If you just straight convert those maps to isometric, the mountains are going to be flat.

It can be done... When I was working on an isometric game I actually had pathfinding take place in a 2D array and then translated into isometric view. All the maps for the game were stored in 2D arrays as well, and then just loaded and displayed isometrically.

[ChrisBurrows]

As MuddyMole said, you need to create and store the map in some form of data structure, most likely an array. Your next decision should be how are you going to represent your map within the array. You've got two options, Diamond or Staggered.

Diamond.



This is literally your traditional square map titled on a 30° angle. The issue here is that arrays do not have negative indices and consequentially, the tiles in the top left and bottom left corners (x<0 and y<0) cannot be written to. Therefore, if you want the entire screen to be filled, the 0,0 tile must be far off frame left and half your array will never be used.

Staggered.



The alternative is Staggered representation, in which every other line is offset. On the downside, staggered maps significantly complicate the process of pathfinding and movement cost calculation (because the values of neighbouring tiles differ depending on whether the current tile Y co-ordinate is odd or even). On the upside, rendering is a much easier task than it is with diamond maps.

The image below demonstrates the array size needed using both methods to completely cover a 16x32 iso tile area (the green rectangle).



But realistically, 2D tile games stopped being computer-intensive about 10 years ago...

[nivram]

Thank you everyone.

Marv