I am designing a game that will require me to use isometric, tile based style graphics.
I have read posts that just say to draw all of the graphics out and then just rotate the map 45 degrees. Is this the correct way of doing it, or are there some more sophisticated algorithms out there for dealing with this style of graphics. I want enough control so that I can implement collision detection and path finding (already done both of these things in some simple 2D tile based games) I will be using the Java Programming language, so I would prefer any sample code (if any) to be either sudo or in java.
There don't seem to be any good tutorials out there covering how to do it in anything other than action-script, and even then the guy just uses a library to handle most of it for him, he doesn't explain any of the techniques that are used. So if anyone knows of a good tutorial (video or text) please post a link.
One more question referencing the actual creation of the graphics. When I am drawing the tiles in Photoshop, do I draw them already rotated on a rectangular canvas, or do i draw them, un-rotated and then rotate them in the engine ?
