Chapter    11

Isometric Tilemaps

With isometric tilemaps you can get the best of both worlds—using two-dimensional graphics to achieve a three-dimensional look. This is why isometric tilemap games are so widely popular. Isometric tilemap games started to get a strong foothold in the late 1990s but slowly disappeared with the increasing 3D rendering performance of desktop computers and consoles. They’ve reemerged with force in recent years in mobile games and web games, where 3D rendering is very costly or unavailable. Examples range from classic computer role-playing games like Ultima VII and Diablo to current Facebook-hype Farmville and many of its official and unofficial companion games.

Isometric games allow you to create believable game ...

Get Learn cocos2d 2: Game Development for iOS now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.