The Plan

The key to any successful project I believe is having a good plan.

There are a few key decisions that have to be made early on in the project, or nothing can be done. Here are a few things to think about:

Tile Engine
At first I had this idea of going completely isometric, I even made up a simple engine that displayed an isometric map on the screen, complete with scrolling. But then I remembered - I'm only a beginner. I was bound to run into problems that I couldnt solve easily.


The isometric engine I started. This was actually the editor. The line through the middle was a few road tiles.

So take 2, I restarted my engine and did it in flat tiles, at a resolution of 320x240. It was looking good, and I was getting somewhere. But I started running into problems because my tile size was too big - 40x40 pixels - way too big for such a low resolution.


The second attempt at an engine. By now I had learnt a lot, but it still wasnt quite right. The graphics by the way, were from a talented guy I found with google, at http://lostgarden.com/2006/07/more-free-game-graphics.html

Finally I have decided to settle on 640x480 with a tile size of 32x32. A tile size of 32x32 will come in handy for multiple reasons:

1. 32 is a multiple of both 640 and 480.
2. 32 is a power of 2. This will make bit-wise operations easier, thus making optimisation faster.
3. It is a nice size that allows for a significant amount of graphic detail without having to create a great amount of tiles.

Screen Resolution and Colour Depth

In addition to reasons above, there arent so many good reasons to go 640x480 as there are to not. Most games of today run at 800x600 or higher, with 32-bit colour. These games usually use DirectX or OpenGL and have a splendor of 3d graphics. However our game doesnt use those technologies. Because of our game's simplicity, we will stick to 640x480. Most other games similar to ours from that era were also 640x480.

The next question is - 8,15,16,24 or 32-bit colour?

Whilst most games of the day were 8-bit, I have decided to go for 32-bit. I originally started my earlier engines in 8-bit but found whilst I didnt run into any problems, I kept finding myself having to re-create a new palette for the game every time I added some new graphics. Some might say that I should start with a palette and stick to it, but to put it simply, laziness has won me over. 32-bit will be easier to code and to draw.