Hi everybody, I was wondering if people here could recommend any good tile-based game programming books. What are the most comprehensive books on the subject? I'm mostly interested in programming a graphical nethack/rogue type of game, not much animation but it would be good if the book(s) had all the necessary algorithms (line of sight, AI, movement, etc.). Do such books exist? It wouldn't be bad if they contained sample code too.

There's no great book on the subject, unfortunately. At the point in time when this type of engine was the most popular the game-related books field wasn't nearly as large as it is today, and I'm afraid that tile-based game books just don't sell like they used to! ;)

For decent books, I can recommend Programming Role-Playing Games in DirectX, Second Edition, and the older Isometric Game Programming with DirectX 7.0. Both are good, but I'd say they are fairly out of date at this point (RPG 2nd Edition much less so).

I'd point out again that I'm working on something that'd help you out, but since there's nothing online to look at yet I can't point you anywhere... but hopefully will be soon! (Crosses fingers for the third or fourth week in a row!)

The kind of game I was thinking of creating would be really simple, almost like Zangband or any other roguelike which has tile graphics. It wouldn't even have isometric graphics, just square tiles for everything and minimal animation. The characters would just jump from tile to tile as they do in roguelikes. I thought that I'd use a readymade Java 2d game engine for the game called "GTGE engine."

I have read the table of contents of those books you suggested and they did seem interesting. I'm thinking now that maybe I should try to create a bit more complex game, the kind of which is done in Programming Role-Playing Games in DirectX 2nd ed. I know it would probably be harder but atleast I'd have a book as a reference. I also know C++ so the programming language wouldn't be an issue.

But yeah, it's too bad that there aren't many books about tile-based game programming. I'll think more about what I'm going to do. Thanks for your reply.

There are some pretty good articles in the articles section, but those don't cover everything.