Mappy - Layers Update

[Jeku]

Alright, I haven't been keeping up with the map utilities thus far, and am currently thinking of doing a small RTS in PB.  If you were starting from scratch on something like that, and had all these utilities at hand, what would you use?

I don't claim to be a PB expert in the least, so the map demo in the PB examples folder (the one where you can click a level together and have the cubes collide around) is rather confusing to me.

I might just go ahead and make my own map editor, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if there is something better already made :)

[thaaks]

Personally I would suggest going with the Mappy slib and the Mappy editor.
The map editor is working - it seems to be stable and usable and offers some nice features. The map format is open and many example codes for other languages do exist (all downloadable from Mappy's web site).
The slib from Kevin might not support all features but you'll get the source code and can add stuff if required.

Another option would be to have a look at TileStudio which is another free map editor.
For TileStudio there are also several source code examples how to write a map reader and some scrollable engine code.

Nowadays I would not suggest coding your own map editor unless you need certain features that can not be done with the existing tools.

Just my 2 cent, but I love to use good tools and there will be enough work left to code your RTS itself  ;)

Cheers,
Tommy

[Jeku]

Cool, thanks for the quick reply.  There is more than enough work for me for the RTS--- and on top of my busy work schedule I doubt I will get a lot done this year :-/

[kevin]

It difficult at this point to make a clear suggestion for mapping.  While we have various editions of  PlayMapper all in various states of usefulness,  Mappy is probably the easiest road at this point.  I wouldn't necessarily call it good fit though.

 As Tommy suggests, it's generally best to use an existing tool and import the content into the your 'game editor' .  Where your composing the game data for the engine so to speak.

[thaaks]

Hmmmm - is your mappy slib some kind of intelligence test?  :rolleyes:
Seems I failed.

I just installed PlayBasic 1.32, loaded the mappy demo from demos\mappy\MappyTest and tried to run it. Bad luck.

tMappyinfo is not known but used in line 29 of main.pba. And that's true. The Slib\mappy.pba does not contain a definition for type tMappyinfo...

Could you please post an updated example?
I replaced tMappyInfo with TMappy according to the function LoadMappy() but now I'm stuck with the mapwidth and mapheight. Are those in TMappyBlock or in TMappyLayerInfo?

Cheers,
Tommy

[kevin]

Mappy.Mapwidth would be Mappy.Layer.Width, same for height

[kevin]

There's the TEST maps from the new mappy example folder

Note:  The Paralax demo isn't working at the moment. (Which is the old mappy demo)