I have a 2D tile system which currently uses 96x96 pixel tiles. I wish to convert to using tiles that have a 3D appearance to them. Each 2D tile sprite is a 96x96 pixel texture placed on a square(two triangles really). I'm thinking to make this work well I'll need to turn the squares 45 degrees so they become diamonds, and tile them that way.

Am I thinking correctly here? Is there a better way?

Lance...

Well if you want to have your game with a more dynamic camera feeling to it you should use this technique, but walls and objects should be made 3D if you want to pull that off.

If you want a 2D isometric game you need to draw your tiles in diamonds and just do the math to tile them and for mouse to tile picking.

http://www.gandraxa....tric_tiling.xml

Awesome link... Thank you!

Sorry if I'm not right, but how you want to construct diamond with using squares? Square can give you cube or parallelepiped. In any case of building diamond you need additional triangle(s) for figure to be done.
I suggest that you need to adopt your system to work with triangles and then build a diamond or any figure that you want.

Sorry if I misunderstood your question. With regards.

Sorry if I'm not right, but how you want to construct diamond with using squares? Square can give you cube or parallelepiped. In any case of building diamond you need additional triangle(s) for figure to be done.
I suggest that you need to adopt your system to work with triangles and then build a diamond or any figure that you want.

Sorry if I misunderstood your question. With regards.

My square is actually two triangles. See original post. =D

He ment quads/triangles in the 3D sense to build a flat diamond to project his tiles on.

Since it's a flat diamond you only need 2 triangles. Take a look at the link, for a isometric view you use a rotated and vertically scaled square (a diamond). Then tile those images so they match up at the borders.

For more information you can google on isometric tiles/projection. It's really fun to make games like this though the math is a bit harder then a normal tile engine. It's also pretty hard to hide the flatness of the map. Diablo 2 did a very good job, they made the tiles at the bottom of the screen appear almost twice as large then the tiles on the top of the screen. That creates debt, i tried to mimic this effect with 2D but came to the conclusion that it was much easier to create a 3D engine for the map.