2D Tile Engine (Several Topics Here)

LordElectro · 2001-02-11T08:54:51

I have been sleeping on an idea i''ve had for a week now. It involves a 2D tile engine, wait, it is a 2D tile engine. I figured out a theoritically pretty efficient way of handling a complex and highly scriptable tile engine that would allow for anything from Pac Man to those Program the Robot puzzles in Dr. Brain to those games where u walk around searching for artifacts and killing monsters. So any 2D tile world where gravity is not an issue can be created using this engine (of course if u have an RPG or something, ur gonna need some extra code, this isnt a whole game creator). I am thinkng about seriously writing this. It would be an engine, plain and simple, and then using the powerful scripting language and tile definition tools, many games can be created really quickly, all of them drastically different. Here''s a quick idea of what I have, however im not gonna reveal how i intend to do this just yet, that''s my problem. Plus this just might be an original idea, though i highly doubt it. I have basically reversed the thinking process of how most ppl do tiles. Instead of saying "I can have many tiles on the grid that are of the same type", i say "I can have the same tile on many places on the grid". You''re probably scratching your head wondering what the heck I''m on, but believe me, it makes sense. Through this concept, I can have large detailed tile structures with many properties while using only a teeny tiny amount of memory. Hell, a version of this with low res graphics and small worlds (50x50 tiles) could work as a DOS program, fitting snuggly in the 640KB of memory. Each tile PLACEMENT takes up 2 bytes. Note that this is different than saying that each tile takes up 2 bytes. A tile will take probably 20-100 bytes depending on how complex i make the system. A maximum of 35000 (other values are reserved, hence the rounding) tiles can be created, but i would be surprised if a game ever needed more than 200. Now you might be thinking, ok, the fool made it so all the water tiles on the map are one tile, all floors another, but what if there are switches? If one switch is manipulated, they would all be? Nope, not how I''m doing it. Each tile placement can still be manipulated individually. A map could have 20 switches, and only require 80 bytes of memory, yet each switch could have a totally different effect. Anyway, the engine promises to be really powerful, however it would result in a map editor that might become as difficult to learn as 3D level editors for games like Quake. Now i need ideas for tile properties, objects taht can react with tiles, etc. Nothing too concrete, i dont want suggestions like "ice tile", however something like "slippery tiles" is okay. I want as many properties as possible, preferably ones that require a single bit to store, but something more complex is okay too,.

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by LordElectro February 10, 2001 11:32 AM

9 comments, last by LordElectro 23 years, 7 months ago

Hardguy

244

February 11, 2001 08:54 AM

I am using a similar tile engine for my game. I made it along time ago and when I made it I made some mistakes that I have to pay for now...
here are some tips:

- Don''t use layers! make each tile a linked list and link it other tiles. Using just takes up memory and makes some more advanced thing more hard later on. It is alot harder to do (especially the editor) but it is woth it!

- Don''t have all info in a TILE_INFO struct. Have some little info in the tile array aswell. If you want to save space You could just use bit flags (8 flags = 1 byte). You shoudl save things as visable, walkable, slippery and stuff like that. When the map is loaded the flags are set to standard values that are in the TILE_INFO struct.

- Incoproprate animated tiles at the very beginning! The sooner you do it the more advnced you can make it. Trust me!

- Use RLE sptites (run length encoded sprites). Transperant tiles take less space and are drawn faster! IF you think they are hard to code use a library like allegro (allegro.cc for info on that.)

- Make the mapeditor userfriendly. If not noone will se the engine.

Thats all from me! Good luck with the enigne!

-------
Me Hardguy.
and here is my game...

2D Tile Engine (Several Topics Here)

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

2D Tile Engine (Several Topics Here)

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Reticulating splines