I'm currently developing an RPG-ish strategy title where you walk around the map in the way of old school RPGs like Ultima IV. I want to spice up the map with a more interesting perspective though.
I like the isometric perspective, but I need a good match between pressing north and moving upwards on the screen. (Moving through the diagonals in the isometric screen is not an option)
Ideally I'd like to end up with a map in this style, but composed out of tiles:
Anyone who has experimented with tile maps with variants to the isometric perspective who can give me suggestions?
There is the idea to simply use rectangular tiles, but the naive design would be equivalent to repeating the same tile horizontally twice everywhere. That couldn't possibly be enough. In this case buildings, mountains etc would obviously need to be overlapping, so that a building extends partly above the tile above, but the flat part of the terrain needs to invoke some perspective in itself, and I wonder if it can.