SDL Iso Tutorial

I must say, that is a very good idea, especially if you can port to many languages alone. Many people are interested in isometric including myself.(Acutally tile... but thats close enuff.) I bet a lot of people would view your site and appreciate it.

Okay, if I write it, first, let me say that I am not going to use OpenGL in the tutorial. There are plenty of OpenGL tutorials out there for such a cause. Also, it will likely be broken into the following sections:

''Basics of Isometric Engines'',
''Basics of SDL'',
''Tiles and Textures'',
''Mapping'',
''Sprites'',
''Movement'',
and ''Menus and Summation''

I''m sure there will be more popping up as a I go along, but we''ll see. This may take a while considering I''m writing a game at the moment, but I''ll try to get it written if there is demand.

Good, forget the OpenGL, go for pure SDL |:^)
Also, I must suggest the following tutorials:
- Physics involving sprites
- Collision Detection and Response
- Summing It up! The Game! (extra small game)

There is already someone doing SDL tutorials on GameDev.net, at http://cone3d.gamedev.net/. So I recommend you take a look over there to avoid duplicating your efforts.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files ]

I think I took a look at those a while ago when browsing the tutorials, however, I found nothing specifically touching on SDL and Isometric engines, which is what my goal is. I could be wrong on this, but I hope to create something original.

Hi, I think many people would be interested in something like that. I was planning on writing a SDL + isometric tut myself some day (when I finish the super-mario-like-game tut).

BUT, would you be interested in writing the isometric tut for my site (cone3d.gamedev.net)? If not, then no problem...



---
cone3d
http://cone3d.gamedev.net
My software never has any bugs - it just generates random featureshello?

The topics you listed are VERY ambitious; Unless you are a very prodigious writer who never sleeps I think finishing even one would be a tremendous achievement.

I would like to see something we don''t see in other articles. Most tutorials I''ve read about Iso/Tile graphics only talk about simple stuff like, "here is your tiles set, here is your map array, this is how you draw to the screen." I think everyone will agree that''s a VERY small part of actually programming any kind of engine. You listed most of the elements in your chapter outline; sprites, movement, tiles etc... Using sprites and some good data structures and a camera you can implement alot of cool stuff, like a particle system; you could talk about parallax scrolling; lighting; timing; making the map dynamic/alterable.

So in short, yeah I''d love to see a tute about a iso engine in sdl, even a 2d engine tute would be great as long as its really about an engine, and not a rehash of the articles already on this site!

Yes, I too would love to see such a tutorial.

I agree with the above poster in thet the focus should be on the engine, and not on the basics of isometric tiling.

This tutorial is a good idea, especially that it''s related to SDL. What I would like to see in the tutorial is some optimizing tricks and such which are usually ignored by article/tutorial writers due to the excuse of wanting to keep everything simple and easy to follow. I do appreciate that point of view, but still, some optimizing tricks would be great.

How about adding a light effects part in the tutorial as well? Light effects are quite important (IMOIMO) in an iso-engine and one rarely sees any good tutorials/articles conserning the topic.

just IMHO

saeZ

Well, dynamic maps are definitely a must, considering a lot of MMORPGs need to use dynamic maps, and storing them client side is not a good idea. The game I''m currently working on uses a fairly large world (10,000 x 10,000 tiles), with all the info stored server-side (in a special format). Due to this, I built dynamic mapping into the client. Half of that is in the math (for heights and widths of tiles), but when you have that figured out, it''s pretty simple. I''m currently working a 40 hour/week job and I normally wanna just sleep when I get home. But, I''m moving to California soon (from Austin, TX) and I should have plenty of time to write turorials out there. Keep up with the input.

Sounds great

don''t forget a particle system

I''d love to see something like this. is it going to be c or C++?

cheers