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As a learning experience, I'm trying to make a turn based strategy game with Java+ObenGL, and I started with squares as terrain tiles. Now I decided I'd rather have an isometric perspective and ever since I've been debating with myself over how to represent those tiles' coordinates in memory.

I see two alternatives:

  1. A 2 dimensional array with X and Y axis going through the rhombus' vertices, resulting in a straight line on the rendered grid.

  2. A 2 dimensional array with X and Y axis following the sides of the cells (like what you'd do with a plain grid of rectangles), instead of the vertices, resulting in diagonal axis in the rendered grid.

What is usually done in these situations? Is one better than the other? Is there a better way I'm missing?

Smig
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  • You might want to also check out the [Game Development](http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/isometric) StackExchange site for answers on this sort of question. – matts Feb 21 '13 at 15:58
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    The first thing that comes to mind is you could store them as you would for a top-down view and just translate them appropriately for display and user input. – Vlad Feb 21 '13 at 15:58

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The display mode and the data are two different things. A two dimensional array is fine if you have values in each cell. For the display find out which section of the grid is currently visible and access the array accordingly. With a simple 2d topdown view you have a direct mapping between the grid and your array. With another perspective you need to do some projection.

Christophe Roussy
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