Map Engine

[Darmakwolf]

I've devised a strange little map system for use with pixel-y (8-16bit) games. It's grid-based, and you move between rooms in similar fashion to the Legend of Zelda (minus the scrolling between rooms... I'll work on that next.) Just run it or compile it, press play, and walk about with the arrow keys to see. I'm not sure what sort of game this will be, but if anyone wants to use my humble map-editor they're welcome to! It's easy to use. Press EDIT to open the map selector. Simply click a map to start editing that room. In the map editor, the entire room is displayed at once. Using the arrow keys will shift to the room relative to the directional key pressed. (e.g, pressing "up" moves the editor to the room above the current one, map-wise.) The actual map grid is huge - 80x80 (that's 6400 maps supported!) It's also important to note that this map editor supports LAYERS. Anyone familiar with the RPG Maker series will understand right away. pressing the numeric keys 1 through 3 switches to that layer. Anything on layer 1 is below the player and has no transparency. Anything on layer 2 is drawn above layer 1 using the pink color for transparency (RGB 255,0,255) and anything on layer 3 is ABOVE the player (the player walks underneath it if it's not using the solid-property,) and also uses transparency. Right clicking any tile copies the tile and its properties to the clipboard. Left clicking draws the tile with the selected property. It should also be noted that the tile-panel on the right side represents the tile set and clicking anything there picks up a tile to draw with. You can add or edit the tiles by editing the tile image in the media folder. For pixelation, the tiles are very small (8x8) and are drawn at 5x the size (40 pixels x 40 pixels.) No special buttons need to be pressed to save the map! Simply switching maps or pressing escape to go back or closing the window does this automatically, so playtesting is easy. Let me know what you think and what sort of game this should be

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[Ian Price]

I love the old-school graphics and styling. keep it up - I'd definitely play a Zelda style game or RPG based on this

[Darmakwolf]

Thanks I'm still stuck on what to turn it into from here. Almost feels like a blank slate. I think for me the easiest route would be a zelda-style sword-swinging adventure. Then there's always other genres, like pokemon or final fantasy-esque...

[Wampus]

Good going. Robust and potentially useful for all sorts of 3/4 top-down 2D games.

I like Zelda clones personally. They are also perennially popular and far less common than 2D RPGs.