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FAQ ABOUT AIE
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1) What does AIE mean?
AIE stands for Argentum Isometric Engine. First off, a little bit of etymology to say why I chose this name. I had to call it in some way, so having in mind that the engine was being developed to be used in a MMORPG called Argentum 2, I picked up the name of the game for its future engine.

2) What's AIE?
It is an Isometric engine, there are three kinds of iso representations that are commonly used in computer games, these are: Slide Maps, Diamond Maps and Staggered maps. AIE uses the last one, many games have used this kind of representation in the past, perhaps the most known of them is Sid Meier's Civilization II. Staggered maps are a bit more complex than the other two kinds, mainly when you have to code the characters movements on the map. But the extra work is rewarded with a more realistic view of the world.

3) Why did you make this engine?
Many reasons, the most important is that I was needing an Engine with some special features to work on my own game. I wasn't able to find any engine with the features I was looking for, so I had to make it from the scratch. 

4) Which are these particular features?
I wanted a customizable engine that provides me: Alpha Blending, Scaling, Dynamic Lightning, Particles system, MP3 support, hardware aceleration, etc. The engine had to run in any Microsoft plataform with a standard 3d card. The only way to add the features I wanted to was using DirectX8 as multimedia Api for my engine. AIE relies on Microsoft DirectX 8, It is a 2d Isometric engine built with a 3d API, this enabled me to add in some advanced features of DirectGraphics8 and implement all features I desired.

5) What do I need to use AIE?
It depends on what you want to do with it, the engine was developed using MS Windows 2000, MS Visual C++ 6 and MS DirectX8 SDK, so if you are going to work on the engine you'll need both tools. If you only wish to run the engine to take a look at it, it will be enough with a windows box, a standard 3d acelerator and DirectX8.

6) Can I make my own AIE based game and sell it?
Of course, the engine is free.