I am planning to implement a game using an isometric tile map. For performance reasons, what’s the best way to implement a scrolling isometric tile map? Anyone with experience in that direction?
So, performance-wise would the following be sufficient?
A) Swing (maybe too slow? are there any tweaks available?)
B) Java2D directly
C) jME, Xith, Java3D, … (other OpenGL high level bindings?)
I have a 2d tile map(not isometric) and a hexagonal map engine that work and only show visible tiles on the screen. Check out GameDev.net about this topic, they discuss it. I used java2D and openGL pipelines, and boast 800+fps on 800*600 window on both engines.
so, basically, what you telling me is Java2D should be fast enough!? ;D
Java2D should be fast enough for the job. GTGE has isometric rendering utility classes and renders them decently (that’s about the only instance I can call up of actual Java2D games using isometric projection). I would treat an isometric tile map as a normal layered tile map. That is to say, x, y and a height/layer parameter. That’s it. 
yes, just be sure you sync the animations/scrolling with high fps, and remove the sleep delay.
For ASD (I know the screenshot is very dark and hard to see, I mean it was in a dungeon!):
http://www.cokeandcode.com/asd/v2/images/screenshots/goodie.png
The iso-engine was an OpenGL projection of a 3D modelled world. This has the great benefit that there was no pixel work for all those different directions, rotations were smooth, transparent wall when a character went behind was easy, performance was fantastic and once the right projection was in place - development was trivial. (Oh and lighting was of course a breeze)
Kev
Heck yeah! I remember that…
Got bloody butchered by them horney things while you were off fighting them little guys! Dam good game that was
DP
how hard would it be to build an XCom clone with that thing?