Commander X16

How would you approach the creation of an isometric landscape using vera on the cx16? The vera can tile only square tiles like 8x8 or 16x16.

Is there a way to create an isometric landscape using square tiles or are other techniques required?

I remember on the Commodore 64 the game Racing Destruction Set, Spindizzy, Zaxxon, Marble Madness ...

Example





Anyone?

Assuming that only sprites are going to move relative to your tilemaps, it's quite easy. You just have to adjust the sprites X level based on its foot position. You would have two tile layers, one that is strictly background that the sprites are always above, and then another that the sprites can be behind or in front of, depending on context. While it's not isometric, my RPG map engine does something like this: 

 

On 6/13/2022 at 4:52 PM, SlithyMatt said:

While it's not isometric, my RPG map engine does something like this: 

 

Thank you for this. Great achievement there. What I'm struggling with is how to create isomeric tiles from square 8x8 chairs. Is there somewhere an example of how to do this? How and which char patterns to create that can be combined to isomeric maps

 

Here's an idea:



This skews the North/South axis, skewing it to the right, but leaves the E/W axis horizontal. The top block would be used for N/S buildings and buildings that are 2x2 or larger, and the bottom block would be used for buildings that run E/W and so should look narrower in the N/S direction.

Unfortunately, I forgot to turn off anti-aliasing in my paint program, so the pieces should have hard edges, but you get the idea. 

For simple isometric playfields I'd use two tile layers, one for each row of tiles.

Each tile is a graphic in a diamond shape so they can be linked as you'd imagine an isometric display would be.

The layers are then offset by half a tile, so they interlock as below.

The green tiles could include imagery that overlaps the red tiles, so you could create some pretty landscapes easily.

If you want to get fancy then you can switch the layers using line interrupts on lines that are half way through a tileset. This would mean red tiles can also be above the green.

Below are 16x16, but you could of course do 16x8 or 8x8 or use line interrupts for other smaller dimensions, depending on how you want it to look.

On 6/13/2022 at 7:33 PM, TomXP411 said:

Unfortunately, I forgot to turn off anti-aliasing in my paint program, so the pieces should have hard edges, but you get the idea. 

Thank you Tom. Very interesting and fascinating how you modelled this so quickly. You know, racing destruction set of EA was a game which I admired greatly when I was young. And I still have not figured out how they did that game. How did they manage to create these tracks with such limited hardware. With elevations that went flat, up, steep up, down and steep down. And this with asphalt, ice and dirty roads. They even had tires and oil spills. Remember such a game on the cx16 with latest graphics. 16 years again it would be for me ?

On 6/13/2022 at 8:04 PM, Yazwho said:

The green tiles could include imagery that overlaps the red tiles, so you could create some pretty landscapes easily.

Thank you sir. Interesting concept using two layers. Would it also work with isomeric tiles that are 30⁰ over 30⁰ instead 45⁰ over 45⁰?

On 6/13/2022 at 4:52 PM, SlithyMatt said:

my RPG map engine does something like this:

Looked again closer to your video and you really made something very nice there @SlithyMatt! Well done! You will have a nice game created when finished. 

On 6/13/2022 at 7:48 PM, svenvandevelde said:

Thank you sir. Interesting concept using two layers. Would it also work with isomeric tiles that are 30⁰ over 30⁰ instead 45⁰ over 45⁰?

Aye, you need to shift each the layer by the difference of the height of the tile and the height of the graphic using a line interrupt.

This isn't quite the way it would be done on the X16 but is very informative: