Hi pros and indies,

i was just wondering what are the styles used in rendering 2D maps for 2D RPG?

i only know rendering the entire map in tiles such as a 2D tile or in isomentric.

i did games in a flat 2D tiled map before (also in isometric) and after that been doing 3D games.

i was just wondering, how games such as that of the 2D version of Golden Sun RPG maps were rendered.

i was refering to these screenshots:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gznftIa6dVk/TY1gsTf75QI/AAAAAAAADAA/hM2gqizAsXE/s1600/15%2BGolden%2BSun.jpg

http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/c/7/7/gfs_51278_2_7.jpg

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/RWbanjnE1LU/hqdefault.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-amY3LgtmUa0/Ua9zVyZ3A4I/AAAAAAAAX3s/4o51zLe47lA/s320/golden-sun-1.jpg

it doesnt looked like a Tiled image to me, and i have a client who chooses to go do the map this way rather than making the game in 3D.

(it does not looked like tiled because of the edges, cliffs, etc. coz if it were tiled it needs a lot of different tiles to do it.)

so can you guys suggest on how to do this? since for me i Dont think the screen shot i posted used tiling.

I just want to know other technique(s) aside from doing

tiling.

THanks,

Yep, Golden Sun is GBA, which does hardware rendering of tile layers, where each tile is 8x8 pixels, and up to 1024 tiles addressable at once.

It most likely uses a dynamic tile loading system, to get past the 1024 limit. Then artists can draw maps in a regular art program rather than making a tileset and then plotting tiles in a map editor. They'll make sure houses and ledges and things are aligned to the game's grid (which I think is 16x16 pixel tiles), and copy/paste features to maximize tile reuse, but don't have to worry so much about pre-planning a tileset and making special tiles for any unique features... just draw them in and let the system figure it out.

On PC, you don't have many hardware limitations to deal with, so you can just have as many unique tiles as you want, any color depth you want, and load them all in RAM at once no problem. But for collision and scripting purposes, you'll probably still want to keep things grid aligned.

Personally I find the pre-planned tileset and plot in map editor style to be much easier and more fun. Plus then you can define collision in the tileset, so you don't have to manually draw a collision layer for every map. But it does tend to result in a more obviously tiled looking game... which I don't mind.