This tutorial assumes knowledge of:

  • Corona SDK
  • Tiled Map Editor

Here’s a short video of the game:

Corona isometric puzzle game

In part 2 of the tutorial I showed how to load your map into a Corona project. In part 3 and 4 I’ll show you some elements of the game logic. I’m going to restrict the discussion to aspects of the game logic that are affected by the isometric perspective of the map.

Let’s firstly look at how to move the blocks on the isometric map. We’ll then discuss display ordering.

Here’s the function that handles block movement. In a nutshell, you provide the function with the angle the D-pad touch listener calculated, and which block was selected. The function will figure out where the block should end up (given the positions of the other blocks on the map), then transition the block from it’s current position to the new position.

--Moves a block. angle is the movement angle (sent from the D-pad)
--i is the selected block
function moveBlock(angle, i)
    --i.e. if a block is indeed selected
    if i > 0 then
        --Variables
        local deltaX, deltaY, newTilePosX, newTilePosY, iTileX, iTileY,
        moveScreenPosX, moveScreenPosY, newScreenPosX, newScreenPosY,
        deltaTilePosX, deltaTilePosY, timeScale
 
        --Arrays
        local jArr = {}
 
        --Only move if the block is not already moving
        --You don't want to interrupt a current movement
        if not block[i].moving then
 
            --Get directional change
            --angleToDir function not shown, it returns the change
            --in x and y axis represented by the angle argument
            deltaX, deltaY = angleToDir(angle) 
 
            --Get tile position of current block
            iTileX, iTileY = block[i].tileX, block[i].tileY
 
            --Get tile position of the other blocks
            for j = 1, #block do
                if j ~= i then
                    table.insert(jArr, { tileX = block[j].tileX,
                    tileY = block[j].tileY})
                end
            end
 
            --Calculate new block position
            --newBlockPos (not shown) will calcalaute the new tile position
            --of block i, given the positions of the other blocks
            newTilePosX, newTilePosY = newBlockPos(iTileX, iTileY, jArr,
            deltaX, deltaY)
 
            --Change in block position
            deltaTilePosX, deltaTilePosY = newTilePosX - iTileX,
            newTilePosY - iTileY 
 
            --See if new position is viable i.e. on the map
            if (newTilePosX >= 0 and newTilePosX < (mapWidth - 1)) and
            (newTilePosY >= 0 and newTilePosY < (mapHeight - 1)) then                             --Update tile position
                block[i].tileX, block[i].tileY = newTilePosX, newTilePosY                         --Calculate new screen position of block i
                moveScreenPosX, moveScreenPosY = (deltaTilePosX - deltaTilePosY) *                tileWidth/2, (deltaTilePosX + deltaTilePosY) * tileHeight/2                       newScreenPosX, newScreenPosY = block[i].x + moveScreenPosX,
                block[i].y + moveScreenPosY
                --Set the block to moving
                block[i].moving = true
                --Update screen position with a transition
                local function listener (event)
                    block[i].moving = false
                    if moveScreenPosX == 0 and moveScreenPosY == 0 then
                    else
                        audio.play(blockClick)
                    end
                    --Check if the game's been won
                    checkWon()
                end
                if math.abs(deltaX) > math.abs(deltaY) then
                    timeScale = math.abs(deltaTilePosX)
                else
                    timeScale = math.abs(deltaTilePosY)
                end
 
                transition.to(block[i], {time=timeScale*100,
                transition=easing.outQuad, x = newScreenPosX,
                y = newScreenPosY, onComplete = listener}
                )
            end
        end
    end
end

In the next tutorial we’ll look at how to re-order the display objects, particularly as they pass each other.