2.5D Map Experiment (29/07)

[IrrelevantComment]

A month or so ago I looked at the games on here and noticed a few things about the way they were made. Quite a lot of them used a 2.5D view and consisted (I presume, I haven't looked at the source code) of maps which were Flash symbols, within which the flooring, walls etc were added manually. At the time I was looking to make a platformer, and as I developed my collision detection system it occurred to me that it would be possible to generate 2.5D maps using code, rather than drag and drop, or requiring any art skills. The swf below represents the work of less than a week on an attempt to realize this system. It is far from finished, but I am reasonably happy that such a system, were it to be finished, would allow you to easily create many diverse maps in a very short amount of time. Better yet, the programmatic approach would allow me to procedurally generate maps, meaning that each map would be different. I also find that I get almost no lag, even on large maps, whereas games such as MiM lag like hell for me. (Integrated graphics cards suck ¬¬)

If anyone wants to know how I did any of this, I'm happy to try and explain it I won't upload my source code or .fla yet as they are mess as hell.

Change Log:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

29/07/12

• Added option for changing scene style
• Added new forest setting
• Non-inside settings do not force you to have a ceiling or walls
• In the forest setting, certain tiles have multiple variations, which are randomly picked so maps are less repetitive
• Fixed a few broken tiles

Click to Play
(Javascript Required)

Legend of Zelda.swf [ 104.7 KiB | Viewed 14392 times ]

[Zeus Kabob]

Very interesting. What you're saying is that you can make a more robust map engine for all of the 2.5D games?

If so, that's some really incredible work. Also, I have a weak spot for render buttons. *squee*

[IrrelevantComment]

I couldn't see it replacing the map engine of any of the other games on here, as it isn't all that flexible in that you can't place, say, a mushroom, but it works well for dungeons, and I think it could make it easier for new games to be made by me and by others if it was finished.

[Biles]

Hmm, are those strings of codes a way of creating platforms by using certain characters to represent objects and materials? I think I read about this somewhere on the internet a long time ago when I was trying to do some research on making Flash 2D platforms and stuff.

[KaTsuO_O]

This is pretty sweet. I've always wanted to make a game where you got a map maker but I have no idea how to make one.

I can't suggest anything this early but it's going to be interesting to see how it turns out.

[asdfasdf]

Hmm, that's really cool Nice job

[TheEnclave33]

################################ this tool is going to be amazing
#000000000000################### keep up the great work
#s00000000000###################
#0000000000a0###################
#00000##########################
####00##########################
####00##########################
####00##########################
####00##########################
####00##########################
####000000000000000000000000000#
####00000000a000000000000000000#
######00000######0000000000000##
#################000000000a0a0##
################################

[FMC]

Not quite Isometric 3D, which is what I thought at first when I read the title, honestly.

But this is kinda cool, because you could (possibly) make people go up and down instead of just left and right.

[talin]

See if you can use this map to figure out where the glitches in the system are. Mostly the corners that mess things up unless you have a way to fix it already and I just put don't know which symbols I should put in.

wow... I just realized I posted this yesterday (or the day before) and didn't paste the map code. Fail on my part, but see if you can't figure out what is messing up those corners.

[banana]

Very cool

[shinox23]

Wow, map-making made a lot easier o-o

[LuftMallow]

Floating platforms (Floor with 0's on all sides) act oddly and can abuse collision detection. The graphics mess up and if it's placed over a corner you can clip through the floor with a jump and fall until you press delete.

[IrrelevantComment]

Hmm, are those strings of codes a way of creating platforms by using certain characters to represent objects and materials? I think I read about this somewhere on the internet a long time ago when I was trying to do some research on making Flash 2D platforms and stuff.

Yeah, the 0 and # basically make up a 2D map, then I use a set of rules to see which pieces should be drawn from the list of 18 pieces

These 18 pieces form the whole map

pieces.PNG (6.06 KiB) Viewed 14631 times

Mostly the corners that mess things up unless you have a way to fix it already and I just put don't know which symbols I should put in....but see if you can't figure out what is messing up those corners.

Floating platforms (Floor with 0's on all sides) act oddly and can abuse collision detection. The graphics mess up and if it's placed over a corner you can clip through the floor with a jump and fall until you press delete.

Currently things mess up with you have walls (#) one symbol thick, simply because I haven't drawn or programmed the pieces for it yet. To have floors/ceilings one block thick would require between 6 and 10 more pieces, and then probably another 6 for walls one thick, and I still wouldn't have every combination. It's probably best to accept that some shapes won't be possible, but I will try and get the more standard shapes working. EDIT: I should probably add that since the upload, I have made it so that gaps (0) one symbol thick should now draw correctly, and also that not all of the pieces have had their collision lines added yet, so even symbols that draw correctly may glitch (mostly when hitting it from beneath).

I'm currently working on adding a forest mode, here's a little preview of it:

outsidepreview.PNG (14.16 KiB) Viewed 14631 times

Obviously many of the pieces are not yet done, and the ones that are done are not exactly brilliantly done.

[Slayer_J]

This is a great idea and can't wait what else you have planned for this. Even so it looks a bit simple by now, I know you have high expectations for this (I know "simple" is a strong word; no doubt it must've taken you quite the time and dedication).

That said, can't wait for you to finish this have like a map generator for the site.

[IrrelevantComment]

This is a great idea and can't wait what else you have planned for this. Even so it looks a bit simple by now, I know you have high expectations for this (I know "simple" is a strong word; no doubt it must've taken you quite the time and dedication).

That said, can't wait for you to finish this have like a map generator for the site.

Yeah, at the moment all it does is draw a few bland tiles, which is an achievement in itself I suppose, but isn't all that much help for creating a game. Ideally I would love to be able to make this into a fully functioning game engine, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself with feature planning as my track record of finishing projects isn't great,* so I will just concentrate on adding a feature or two at a time. At the moment I'm experiment with a few things and I'm trying to demonstrate that the engine could be flexible by adding a forest mode. By being able to have multiple different settings I think it would be far more useful. I'm also trying to use the forest setting to show that the maps won't be bland and boring like they were before.

This is pretty sweet. I've always wanted to make a game where you got a map maker but I have no idea how to make one.

Essentially what you are doing is loading a tile based map from some kind of storage format, be it xml, ASCII, or images (this editor saves maps as a .png image). For games that aren't clearly tile based like this it becomes a lot more difficult, but for simple top down tile games it's fairly simple, programming wise. You can essentially load and save something like a minecraft map (or at least just the blocks) in about 10 lines of code, whereas this needs about 200 (probably more like 400 by the time I'm done).**

On a side note, if anyone's interested in the design process of this I was looking to increase the flexibility by adding more tiles:

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Here's the plan I drew for adding a few more tiles:

The blue lines break the map down into distinct tiles, the green writing represents the code in the text editor that is rendered as a tile, the blue squiggles cross out tiles I already have, and the red lines outline the new part of the map

* By "isn't great", I mean I have started about 40 projects if not more in the last 5 years and finished none.
** Not to imply my editor is anywhere near as hard to make as Minecraft, I'm simply referring to loading the data here.