The first version of my code is available on Steve Woodcock's pages , and it may be easier to read and understand. Two recent games that use isometric displays instead of full 3-D worlds are Roller Coaster Tycoon and SimCity 3000. In these games, the artists can put in details that you may miss with 3-D polygons. I'm fascinated whenever the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts , and tile based games are no exception. Implementing infinite maps More Tile Game Information Search for more pages on influence maps , isometric maps , line of sight .
Many war games use hexagonal grids instead of square grids.
Squares share an edge with four neighbors but also touch another four neighbors at just one point. This often complicates movement along grids because diagonal movements are hard to weight properly with integer movement values. Many times I play a game and wish that the computer opponents were written better. I've collected some articles and pointers to information about artificial intelligence in games. The first link is to Steven Woodcock's AI page, which should be your first stop when looking for AI information as it relates to games.