New Map Creation Features

As mentioned in my previous post, over the last week I implemented various brush sizes, a fill tool and a rectangle tool.

Various types of smart tiles have been implemented, and layers have been improved to handle naming and reordering.

With these new features, new possibilities in map creation have arisen, and creating maps should be a quicker process.

Tile styles

By painting the smart tile sheets in different ways, as I had hoped, there’s a fair amount of flexibility around what it can handle. Although there aren’t any assets yet, I’ve managed to utilize what little art skills I do have, and made use of how friendly google images is for temporary test images.

New Map Editor Features

To further ease the process of map creation, the editor has gone through a few changes.

Furthermore, undo has been implemented, so that incorrect moves can be undone without any difficulty.

Finally, brush graphics have been implemented to help the designers be aware of what tiles they are painting.

Path finding 

Working with Aaron, we’ve implemented path finding using A-Star in the overworld. Collision will be painted into the map like any other tile. One layer will be dedicated to defining the collision.

Other than discussion with the other programmers as the as the lead, this was the first of many upcoming collaborations to start bringing elements together.

What next?

I am further behind with the editor than I would have liked, with some serialization issues throwing a spanner in the works, on top of spending a fair amount of time on my major (see my previous post if you’re interested).

High priority goes to the saving of individual chunks, just to add one extra layer of reliability and safety to the saving of maps, and then it’s simply a matter of art being created before the editor can begin being used. As the project progresses, additional tools will be added or tweaked as deemed necessary, but as far as I can see, no other features are strictly vital.

Working with Matt, I would like to get his overworld movement working with the tile system as well, so we can have test scenes to walk around. This should really start setting up an environment in which we can really start testing other features.

I will also start working on the next part of the world editor once the map editor part is complete. The next part will involve placing entities throughout the world, such as characters, chests or other interactable elements.