I'm planning to make a simple, tiled, top view game (like first zelda's or pokemon). Something that would have a good performance also on mobile devices. I never did this before so I have basic question about the design of this type of games.

I have ground tiles that are all the same size (36x36), but I also have lots of smaller objects in game that fit in 18x18 for example. So in this case, should I break those bigger tiles into four and make entire grid 18x18, or should I just put together tiles of different sizes like puzzles and use another array only with 18x18 grid for collision? I don't know how it is done in those games. I really need good performance.

Thanks for reading!

Assuming you're targeting modern smart phones, I doubt you'll need to worry that much about performance with a top down 2D styled game!

If I were you, I'd definitely go for the smallest grid size possible, for collisions, events etc as well as graphics. The main reason I can think of is that for some of your

bigger environment objects, you might want different parts to have different properties. So for example, if you store a tree as a collection of smaller tiles, you'll be able to

make it so the character can go beneath the top part of the tree but collides with its base. I imagine there'll be lots of other similar examples too.

A good idea might be to have a quick look at one of the RPG makers, they've pretty much perfected this type of thing: http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/

Thanks, that answered my question. And it was really helpfull to see how RPG maker has it solved.