I wish I had something to show, but right now I’m neck-deep in Javascript. I’m building an isometric tile engine for the HTML canvas element. This is something I’ve worked on before, so I’ve got some bits and pieces laying around, but now I’m sort of pulling it all together to get a scrolling map going ASAP.

The basic idea is to load resource images into the DOM then use them as you normally would in a tile engine. So I copy a rectangular region from the resource image onto the canvas, wash-rinse-repeat. Since it’s isometric, I’m working with squashed diamond shapes. For this implementation I’m using tiles that are 300 x 150 pixels. Every other row has to be offset by a half-tile so they tile up nicely. Anyway, this is all probably stuff you know.

I’m working on a few interesting bits with canvas. One is shadows, which I’ve got some prototype code for and will probably use. With that I copy the sprites in a translucent black and then apply a matrix when copying them onto the map so they’re skewed properly. I’d like to figure out a good way to blur them too, but may not get to that. Another thing I want to experiment with here is particles. I might try using the mousewheel for zooming in and out a bit, but that will be a Sunday thing, I reckon. I have the concept worked out in my head, but we’ll see.

As for the game itself, I’m planning to sleep on it and see what details may emerge.