In a place where your fantasy can roam free, there won't be any boundaries to what your imagination can create.
Misha’s Tech Playground
graphics, fun and code play
I'm crazy - but who cares? My ideas are constantly dwelling and this is the place for them to pour out and form into something good. Only active participation will ultimately make this place come to life.
Generating Tile Maps
About nine months ago I discovered Open Sword Group’s Pixen a really neat image editor for OS X, perfectly suited for Pixel Art. I was working on my BA thesis by that time and investigated the possibility of tile based graphics for the thesis project.
Though it turned out that tiles were not feasible. However this application and the sites I discovered through my research had sparked fond memories of long lost games and an idea was planted.
For a couple of months now I am working on my very own little game project. Initially I was trying to use RepTile to create my maps. But after trying to contact the author without getting any response it seems the project is abandoned. Though the concept of this little application is still neat.
It works like any other tile map generator in the way that you can paint your map using the tiles you provide. A great addition however is that you can already assign properties to map tiles. For example, the stone wall is not walkable and the grass has less movement cost than the dirt . You get what I mean.
As badly as I wished to use this little program, I am no Cocoa programmer and can therefore not ad features I need.
But luckily I can do JavaScript and this seems to be the perfect playing field for it. Since tile based games are mostly web related, why not create the maps straight in the browser. So I took the great RepTile idea and moved it over to JavaScript and the outcome was this (click to see the full image):
The generator is working and can perform the basic tasks of painting tiles and assigning properties to them. Clicking the generate button will present you an xml file which you can use with an appropriate engine (such as the one I am working on). However, the code is a bit messy right now.
But if there’s enough interest I’ll clean it up and post it here.
P.S. The tiles used in this screenshot aren’t mine. Danc made them. Anyone interested can find the link in the Sprites, Sprites, Sprites post.
Tags: Games, level editor, tile graphics
3 Responses to “Generating Tile Maps”
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Level Editor Redux…
I have dedicated more of my sparse spare time and refined my level editor quite a little bit.
I have found some very cool and useful information about tile based games on the net this week and parts of it are already directly influencing the current co…
Would love if you share this. I started writing my own in flash, and quickly came to realization Im too lazy.
If not, could you recommend any others. Export to XML is bonus.
Hi mondo,
glad you like it. I have released some of the alpha builds already. As mentioned in Level Editor Redux I put up a page containing all the links. Though you need to be registered to view it as this is not a “real” public release. The code is still buggy and everything is hard coded, so it might not truly fit your needs.
I am currently rewriting the codebase though, you might have seen the preview already, which will bear a much improved editor.
I don’t have any first hand experience with any other editors beside RepTile, but a web search should give you plenty of results.
Cheers