Contents  Introduction  Setting up Direct3D  Rendering a  Wireframe  Isometric View  Let's Texture This  Beast!  Adding Lighting  Something More  Impressive!  Wrapping This  All Up  Printable version

Where To Go From Here (Or What I didn't cover!)

A number of topics could have been in this tutorial, but were omitted so that it didn't turn into a book. The basics of each is here, but a more advanced treatment of any of these would require its own tutorial. Some of these things are:

• Sprites. I didn't produce a general quad-drawing system, although I gave out enough information that it should be really easy to do. Hint: load the sprite as a texture (using color keying if you aren't using any form of texture filter - it works the same was as in 2D, just remember to use SetRenderState(D3DRENDERSTATE_COLORKEYENABLE, TRUE) at least once.
• Complex Lighting. Vertex lighting is cool, and can be made a lot cooler if you apply dynamic lighting routines, more sophisticated light generation systems in the first place, etc. Lightmaps can also be cool, although they can eat up a lot of resources pretty quickly.
• Layering. I deliberately didn't go into this; there are a lot of articles out there covering layering in tile based engines - and layering in Direct3D is no different from layering in 2D.

I'm open to any other suggestions, of course. This tutorial was intended as a primer in using Direct3D to enhance one's tile rendering experience, and I hope it has helped. You can contact me at bracket@unforgettable.com with any questions, comments, queries or complaints!

Source Code

Did you start here? I know I would have! Here is the accompanying source code.

About The Author

Herbert Wolverson, commonly known as Bracket, is a 24 year old Computer Consultant. Writing databases (and similar mundane tasks) by day, he works on game technology by night. He somehow also fits in time with Tina, his girlfriend, 2 pet rats, 1 pet snake, a guitar and weekly roleplaying sessions. Bracket needs to sleep more, and drink less caffeine!

Bibliography

TANSTAAFL, "Isometric 'n' Hexagonal Maps Part I"

TANSTAAFL, "Isometric 'n' Hexagonal Maps Part II"

Jim Adams, "Isometric Views: Explanation and Interpretation"

Tobias Lensing, "Enhanced 2D"

André LaMothe, Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus.

Microsoft, DirectX SDK documentation. Usually the first place to check!