Irrlicht Engine

I'm trying to use the engine to draw a visual gridded representation of data.

I have a table of data, which includes coordinates and other data.

Using the coordinates I want to place a box of a predetermined size (16 pixels x 16 pixels) to a computed location on the screen. This is the easy part ...

I have a .tif file that is a 16 bit 100 dpi image that I want to use as a background and then draw on top of it. I've tried using all the DriverTypes, and even a 100dpi jpg and it says "Could not create vertex shader" and then "could not load texture: image.tif"

If I save the tif as a bmp in paint ...

It also sucks to be a programmer with limited/no artists

You should read the isometric tutorial and see how orthogonal projection can be used. Then you can use 3d objects with the intended look.

The problem with 3d objects is that I have no talent in making 3d models. :)

I've changed this up a bit. What we decided to do is to build a single terrain ...

Here's a sample map. This is rendered from a DataTable but I'll try some of your suggestions.

http://files.otherworld-rpg.com/tiletest2.gif

The thing is that my game will have city building, so each Tile can change. That's why I wanted to build the map from my XML, save it as an image and then ...

I need to write one. Does anyone have any good resources on the basics? I understand there are a lot of statistics involved, but I'm just not sure on the best way to implement it. Is it better to have a tiered calculator - ie, several "dice rolls" that come to an end result, or one "roll of the dice ...

I've got several questions about the engine. I've only played with it enough to proof of concept my idea using the examples. I'm new to game design, but not new to programming. I just wanted to get some answers from the experts and see if any of the things I want to do are possible.

I'm developing ...