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Applications

Naturally, the favorite application of this technique concerns games above all. You have to realise that NO game containing 2D scrolling uses any technique other than this one, which has therefore largely proven its advantages up to now. It's been used in a very large number of "genres" of games, namely platform games, shoot'el ups, beat'em all, strategy games, puzzles, etc... It is also used in a quite varied number of representations, for instance:

isometric "3D":

Zaxxon, from Sega, the first game using the isometric representation

instead of a repesentation in profile, it's shown in a "three quarter" view, thus giving a depth feeling. The tiles aren't square-shaped anymore, but diamond-shaped, or cube-shaped.

this is how I did "Click club : Escape from detention" and "AfterSchool Snowdown"

"Mode 7"

You apply a 3D deformation to the scrolling, created with the tile based technique. This is how I could make this small test, or the effect on this cube : the clouds scroll relatively to the cube's rotation, and are then quaded.

"trigonometric" scrolling:

in"Drift Out", the whole level rotates at the slightest movement of the wheel

In this case, a realtime rotation is applied to the bitmap which scrolls relatively to the direction. That's how I did On the Ball

Etc...

There are several other ways to use the tiles technique, but maybe you'll create some new others! This technique is very versatile once you get to master it, and it can of course be used on many other applications than games, with a particular aptitude for Shockwave, since it allows to get very big images while retaining the downloads small.