mod_tile_isometric_base/docs/en.md

Isometric Tiles — the diamond map view

Isometric Tiles draws tile maps at an angle, as a grid of 2:1 diamonds, so buildings and trees stand up out of the ground. It is one of two map views for the shared Tile Rendering engine; the other is Top-down Tiles. The same maps, events and saves work in both.

What is different from the top-down view

• Diamond cells. Each map cell is drawn as a diamond twice as wide as it is tall. The logical grid is still square: a cell has the same four neighbours as before.
• Standing objects. Buildings and other multi-cell objects that a tileset marks for it are drawn as upright pictures or as several flat faces, instead of flat tiles.
• Characters pick the sprite row that matches their direction on the diamond grid.
• Clicking on the map selects the diamond under the pointer; the RPG map editor uses the same rule.

What does not change: walking rules, collisions, events, battles, saves, lighting and time of day are owned by the RPG mod and Tile Rendering and behave the same in both views.

Limitations

• Keys follow the grid, not the screen. Up and down (W/S, arrows) move along one diagonal of the screen, left and right along the other, because they move the hero one cell on the square grid.
• The edges of a map show. Near a corner of the map you see the empty background beyond the diamond's edge, as in the picture above.
• Tilesets must be prepared. Objects look upright only when the tileset describes them as groups; ordinary tiles are laid flat on the diamonds.

Turn it on

In the game's scheme (Mods & Collections → Collections → the game → Edit scheme), include this mod and set Map projection to Isometric. The value of the tile.renderer setting is isometric:

"settings": { "tile.renderer": "isometric" }

To try it once without changing the game, start it with --tile-renderer=isometric on the command line. RPG Plus already includes both renderers, so only the setting needs to change.

If something goes wrong

1. The map is empty. The game's Map projection asks for a renderer that is not included; include this mod or choose another projection.
2. The hero walks diagonally. That is how the keys work in this view (see Limitations).