Worklog for _Skully
TileMap Engine
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| I've updated my Blog linked off my signature. Cheers. Blog | TileMax  -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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| Blogging here now... Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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Well, my time to work on this has been seriously reduced lately as I go
through buying a house but that doesn't mean its been sitting still. Everything is working quite well so far... my next task is to do something that I realize now I should have done from the start and thats to compartmentalize the actual tile engine into its own include file. I managed to mix some code together so that will be my next task.. the good thing is that I noticed that the bulk of the code is the editor and not in fact the engine. So thats good news. The reason it has come to this is that I am just now adding actors (read player first) and in order to test the player movement / collision code I need to have the engine running in game mode! yay... the fun finally begins on this project Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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TileMax is really coming together. Its supporting 4 layers, tile-based
multiple parallax, scrollers, and animated tiles on any layer. The save/load is finally working as well... I'm so close to working with actors Yay! But first I have to add tileSet to anim strip and tileset to mini-set's to support animated tiles, scrollers, and paralax effects better. After that the fun begins! Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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There was a short term scare where I was faced with some seriously
boring chunks of coding.. when you do this for a hobby those serious
boring chunks of code run the risk of project abandonment and swerving
off on to some eye-candy rich playtime coding. But, I managed to stave
off the temptation and keep on truck'in with the tile mapper. Happily, I have gotten through it and now have a working tile map engine that contains up to 4 layers per tile (parallax / scroller), background/collision (hidden or visible), background, & foreground Coding the map expansion was probably the hardest part since there is no grid to refer to and each tile references the next relatively. it was an interesting game of logic but I managed to get it working. Of course, in the end, a hundred lines of code ended up turning into about 20 after I went off on a strange logo-like attempt which was awful until i came to my senses and finally "saw the light" Does anyone read these things? lol Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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The new tilemap engine is coming along great. I now have a much more
interesting TileMap engine working. Its array-less and uses a recursive
drawing technique. Its got 3 layers, the collision layer that can be
visible or invisible, a background layer and then a foreground layer
that will be drawn overtop the player. Its running at a good speed
according to several testers. I've just finished getting the TileSet
brush editor working which works much better than the last go... this
method will enable brushes to be made from TileSets and Swatches made
from the map. Map building should be a lot of fun when its all said and
done. Next, I have to work on the brush pasting and merging and then
its the save/load system. Then I'll add a simple character to move
around the map with just to see how it performs Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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Well I finally got my copy of BlitzMax and have been diligently
learning the new language structure. Very different but as I learn more
and more I am liking what I see... MUCH more versatility and power
under the hood but with that comes a little more complexity. However,
that being said I have finally gotten over the initial shock and am
starting to work on the meat of the new version. I hope to have
something to show in the relatively short term but for now.. its onward
and upward! Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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So far so good.. the Tile Map engine itself is working, it displays the
tile map at any given coordinates and is constrained to those
coordinates... I have a routine to display the tile map using 3D sprites
but it doesn't appear to be any faster...I retained the code but am not
using it anymore. The Brush system is greatly improved... now you can build Brushes of varying shapes.. I noticed this was necessary after looking at a few tile sets out there that jam the tiles together so you cannot pull the pieces as a square. Next I'll add a brush sorter for moving the tiles around in the brush to allow for tile sets that are not organized correctly and also mirror operations for tile sets that don't supply already mirrored version of tiles. after that I'll be adding a character editor that will allow character sheets to be loaded, and the various animation sequences applied to Right move, left move, climb, crouch, jump etc.. as well as special moves Onward and upward... cheers Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |
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Since returning to the Blitz Community, I was not sure what I wanted to
do.. but with 3 kids in my house now I notice a lot of issues with
games and small children. So, I've decided to create a game for kids... I decided on a TileMap 2D game, since my kids seem to be drawn to 2D style games more than 3D, but I wanted a platform that I can build other games relatively quickly after... my previous game writing experiences told me to create a versatile engine rather than focusing on a game right away per-say. What do I have right now? So Far I have a TileMap system that allows me to use multiple Tile Maps (divisible into 32x32 tiles). I can create brushes from those tile maps and then paste them onto the game map. There are two brush pasting modes, Merge and Replace. Merge creates a new custom image based on the original tile with the new brush... only tiles with Alpha are merged.. the remaining just get replaced. I have saving/loading working as well... it creates a tile map out of the custom images produced by the merging actions. I also wrote a simple GUI (just the basics) that is nice and fast. I also was reminded of the huge performance hit that using the Text command causes so I created a simple system that just converts the currently loaded font into an image font... I called it gText. I also have a poly line system for drawing barriers... those barriers can block the player from both sides or a single side. Since no player is implemented yet... its really a mute point.. but the functionality is prepared... Well, that about wraps it up for now... Check it out on http://sites.google.com/site/skullyproductions/ Next post I will likely have a better brush build system (right now it has to be square) and address the collision layer and how I want that to work... Cheers. Blog | TileMax -- Game Creation Framework -- |