2D maps.

[Anonymous]

Hi I’m looking for some advice/help. So far I’ve created a few games with a plain background that I can move an object around.

I’m now intersted in creating a dugeon. Say 8 rooms connected together. Can anyone suggest any resources/tutorials to get me started??

[Anonymous]

You’ll need to supply a bit more information than that.
Are you talking about 2D or 3D for instance?

[Anonymous]

Sorry, must half been have alseep (up late working on assignment) when I posted that,

Ok so far I’ve created a single room (surface) with SDL/C++.

What I want to do is create little dungeon rooms that link together. All 2D, a overhead shot simlair to that of the orginal Zelda games. I think with small games I could get away with drawing the whole map on one surface, but I’d like to take a more “professional” approach and consider the possiblity that many hundreds of rooms may eventually be linked.

I’m also trying to find out more about tile maps, and what is the differnce between that, and a plain surface. Whats the best approach to take, and how do I learn/take it.

Ideally what I’d like to do, is create a map file, which contains information about the map. A function would then generate the data and store it in a suitable data structure, to be displayed on screen.

[Anonymous]

You can create tiles for isometric games which will work in a 2D game. In the old days this was done in Delux Paint and images were drawn by hand. If you are rendering 3D graphics to be used as 2D tiles and they are being shown from any kind of angle, make sure you don’t use perspective to render them. (Same is true for drawing by hand). Whether rendered or hand drawn, all of your diagonal lines should be parallel. That way any graphic can be placed beside another and their diagonal base lines on the ground should slot into each other.

30 degrees by 30 degrees is the usual angle for strategy games, although in reality it’s not exactly 30 degrees. Delux Paint used to round it off to 30 but what you’re really looking for is a neatly stepped pattern in pixels. You can do this in Windows Paint.

Zoom in to 8X.
Use the line tool to draw a diagonal line where the pixels measure 2 across, 1 up, 2 across, 1 up.
Always use this type of line to define the edges of your tiles.
If you use 256-colour 8 bit file formats like BMP or PCX, you can specify a colour to act as a transparency. Set this to something horrible that you would never use in your image. Pepto-Bismol pink works well — R255 B255 G000
Finish your work in Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or something a little nicer than Windows Pain(t). Paint is good for those base lines though. It’s not advisable to create tiles with antialiased edges.

If you’re more up-to-date and can use a PNG or TGA file, then the outsides of your tiles can be made transparent with an alpha channel.

Shane

[Author]

Posts