I work in 2D and would like to try a game with 3D movement like in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. You can probably recall that game had an isometric view and Mario could jump up and onto platforms. He could also go up stairs. I don't have any idea how to pull this off in code. Any ideas?

In an isometric game, you have to keep track of the tiles you placed on the map. Stairs or a platform are just special tiles that tell your code where they life and how the path is placed on them. Think as if it is a street, a street has curves and cross-roads that lead your car in a specific direction.

You should check if a character can move from one tile onto another (walls, cliff) and into what direction it can move (stairs go up and down only, you can't fall off)

Limdallion said:
I work in 2D and would like to try a game with 3D movement like in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. You can probably recall that game had an isometric view and Mario could jump up and onto platforms. He could also go up stairs. I don't have any idea how to pull this off in code.

You can store a height with each tile, conceptually the height of each corner (typically 0, +1, or -1 with all its direct neighbours).

Practically, you want something more efficient, eg the height at one corner and the shape of the tile, or the height of one corner and ask neighbouring tiles for the other heights. What works depends on what you need to have, eg vertical faces?

At some point of course a tile is not 1 level, but a stack.