Any information for RPG creation appreciated =p

Question

If you remember me, I am the programmer that made the attempt (half decent if you ask me) at recreating Scorched Earth. Well, time has passed and my next project lies at hand. This time a team and I are moving into the exciting world of a 2D RPG. I read this forum daily and have learned a lot from similar posts, largely though I would like to know how to effectively implement a nice tiled engine. Any tips would be very very appreciated (source code for tile engines as well), even more specifically any advice of these questions would be awesome...
-As far as layers go (background,foreground,sky) would JLayeredPane be a reliable option? especially with the use of Full Screen Mode and Buffer Strategy (if those two are good ideas as well)
-Any suggestions/rescoures for collision detection implementation
-Any advice/suggestions on buffering techniques so I do not have to redraw the backgrounds each and every time (such as circle-buffering)
-Any other advice/resources
Please don't redirect me to javagaming.org as I have already been there multiple times =p
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Ryan

Answer 1

I have one tip: build your own tile engine by yourself. It might sound hard, but it is definately worth it.
I made mistake once and used 2d Tile engine code that was poorly documented and basically it made everything harder and resulted in failre of the project. When you build the engine yourself, the profits are that you will understand 100% what it does. Its easy to implement new things. And its fun. its not as hard as it sounds.
First I'd suggest deciding the map form. How the maps are handled. Are they arrays, symbols or crypt and the how the world would interact with the monsters and players.
Now you got decent idea what you ought to do. Find a way to load the map, then how you are going to move the map. Now figure out how you are going to draw it. Layers? 2d array? Now draw the map.
I suggest making mind maps of the classes and how they affect each other. Then you can specify each problem and solve them one by one.
I'd suggest that you'd code your own pane option for yourself. It can't be that hard and as for collision detection and stuff it would be helpful to know whether the game is turn based or real time.