Does anyone wish there were more games that used isometric tilemaps?

If so, what kind of features would you guys like in a tilemapper? My first concern right now is tile size.

You mean like this, but with bigger tiles?

ya. I'm kinda interested in what the tiles would actually have to look like to fit onto the screen.

You're welcome to the PS3D engine:

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/327/32759.html

k so maybe what I mean to ask is, does anyone want to see smooth scrolling isometric tilemappers?

Of course! BASIC or ASM?

yes. 12*12

ASM

I was just kinda randomly thinking, and I may have stumbled on a way to make isometric mappers that will perform almost as fast (ok, so maybe half as fast because in isometric view, there are so many more tiles) as tilemappers such as Dwedit's, Jim e's, Misster, and maybe Crash if the mapper was written in vertical alignment.

It's just that my ASM skills are probably not at the point to write regular tilemappers as fast as those, so I'm not sure if I'd be able to write an isometric one.

And it wouldn't be worth my time to delve further if there weren't people interested in smooth scrolling isometric games.

and I'd probably need to know what the most common isometric tiles look like.

edit:
um if I did 12 x12, wouldn't it be easier to set the LCD driver into 6bit word mode and make tiles 2 bytes wide?

lol, probably. Id love to see a good isometric game.

Re: the 12x12 comment: definitely would be easier. That might be a novel way to try it, I'd say play around with that a bit...

This is a standard 16x16 isometric tile. Now the thing about a tiles is that in order for perfect tessellation, the pink area of the tile must be the exact same shape as the empty space indicated by the dark green. This must hold true for all four quadrants/corners (8x8 subdivision) of the tile entry. That means freaky tiles like the one on the right can also tesselate "isometrically".


ok, so here's a possible way to give the mapper tile map data. it'd be harder on the user when it comes to using the tilemap for hit detection, but it might be easier just to give the mapper an x,y coordinate. white space is "empty" where there's no tiles.


ok, so here's probably what most programmer's want. just simply aligning the tilemap info into a diamond shape so the programmer can use it for hit detection along the isometric plane. more inputs are probably needed because a tile x,y coordinate is probably needed, and then which amount of scrolling would need to be indicated.

thoughts?

basically, I'd like to know what you guys think the "standard" tile shape should be, and how you'd like to give inputs to display a specific part of a "map. imho, I like the first method better because it'd be easier to create "artificial backdrops in the "empty space". but then a separate map is needed to track hit detection on the "ground"

use a hexagon for the regular tile shape, and use row-diagonal coordinates.

And please, please allow 8-way movement and collision detection.