Isometric Tile Engine using DirectX

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010629/geczy_01.htm
and
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art...rticle1434.asp

These are guides I am going to start with for writing this. I decided on DirectX because I already have 2 books one on DirectX (Tricks of the 3D Programming Gurus and Programming Role Playing Games With DirectX) Tricks deals with DirectX 9, RPG deals with DirectX 8... but from what I understand that shouldn't be a problem since there wasn't too much changed between the 2 that the guides for 8 will work for 9 with a little work on updating the code.

One of my main questions is from you DirectX gurus, do these guides look sound? I know there are a number of guides out there that teach bad programming practices.

I have also read

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art...article744.asp

to get an understanding of the physics behind a isometric tile engine.

Are there some other guides I should look at, I plan on cruising through gamasutra and gamedev some more to try and find more guides on this topic.

Tricks doesn't cover Direct3D at all, actually. Nonetheless it's an excellent book definitely worth reading!

And those guides you linked look fine.
I'll see if I can dig up some other articles on the subject, from when I wrote my first 2D RPG, as well.

I am actually revising my stratigy, it is looking like I am going to learn OpenGL instead... From what I have been reading it is going more and more towards .NET and that is not a place I want to go.

The first chapter of Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus is how to make the Basse program using DirectX that the examples will use throughout the rest of the book.

Yes, .NET/Java/etc ftfl... =/
But also, OpenGL/Basic/etc ftfl...

The PC platform is cruel as hell...