I've thought about the question of using diamond or staggered maps for our isometric projection and decided that staggered maps are the route we want to take.
As you can see from the image above, Diamond maps, when you get to an edge, will typically have a dark edge leading into void (as is typical with most RTS games like Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, etc.). We want our maps to be seamless without such a border so naturally staggered maps come to mind.
An added benefit to using staggered maps is that the math is significantly easier to work with — properly drawing diamond maps with full out render optimization is tricky at best.
With this method of mapping, mappers may be thrown off at first by not having a nice even edge and corners but that shouldn't make it any more difficult to build maps. Our map editor will actually be in-game as well so it will be easy to switch between edit/play mode and immediatly test a map after changes.
