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Hi there,
If I wanted to make a basic maze type game like pacman, how would you do it? Would you create a different solid object for each corner/straight bit of the maze and then give them their properties using markers, or is there another way? I tried searching tilesets in the online help and in the forums but couldn't find anything answering this, although I can't be the first to think about this!
Cheers.
Not sure what you're asking. If you just want to make a maze, yeah you could just have something like 16x16 pixel active objects for walls...
Not sure what "give them their properties using markers" is supposed to mean though.
I think he means that they have nice designs depending on the type of tile they are, eg corners, protruding, 1-thick wall, diagonal wall, etc.
The Dungeon object is pretty useful for this (I think), though I have never used it myself.
I believe there was a nine-slice object that did this, however I have only ever heard it mentioned once and such never used it.
I'll look into that Dungeon object then. I just find it surprising that there isn't an easy way to put in solid objects and/or 'paint' on the different maze parts.
LB - yes you're right. I mean all the nice corners, vertical walls, horizontal walls etc.
Konidias - what I meant was qualifiers, sorry for not using correct terminology. As far as I understand it, I could have made 8/9 different objects for all the different types of wall, give them all the same qualifier, and then give them all the same properties and conditions etc.
After having a play around it seems the Dungeon Object is for random generation on a frame, rather than painting a predetermined level.
In GM I know that you could define one object as a solid wall and then use a tile set like a painter's palette to draw in vertical walls, horizontal walls, corners, ends etc.
I find it difficult to believe that MMF makes creating a tile-based map so difficult! Any other ideas?
I specifically recall seeing a maze drawn by the duneon object - oh well.
Well, another solution by Looki, you can go through each tile and use 1 to represent that there is a tile next to it and 0 to represent empty spaces next to it. Then you can use the OR operator to combine them into a number which refers to an animation frame to display. An example formula:
Flag( "Tile", 0) OR (Flag( "Tile", 1) * 2) OR (Flag( "Tile", 2) * 4) OR (Flag( "Tile", 3) * 8)
Of course, the + operator works just like the OR operator in this particular case, but because we are combining individual bits it made more sense to use OR.
That's beyond me at the moment. I didn't really understand anything you put there!
I'll just have to try and recreate and place every individual tile. It just seems weird to have to be that laborious. There was another tileset drawer that I found somewhere, but it's fixed for grid size and so it no use. All I wanted to do was use the pacman spriterip to just make a copy of pacman in MMF to help me learn.
Thanks for trying anyway. Like I said, it's just something that I know GM does easy as pie. Just surprised that no-one has ever wanted to draw a tilebased map in MMF, or find a way to make it easier!
I'm still not entirely sure what it is you're wanting... Are you wanting a level loader? Are you wanting automatic tile detection so that it builds walls based on some actives and their positions?
I made an example of that here: http://www.konitama.com/CornerSet.mfa
Are you saying you just want to paint in tiles in the MMF editor or what?
MMF really deals in objects rather than tilesets... I haven't used GM much so I'm not sure if I'm interpreting what you said above right, but if it works the way I'm imagining it, having one object with different 'tiles' that you can choose from is an interesting idea... the nearest in MMF would be giving one object different animations and then setting those animations while the game is running.
You can use the Ctrl key to quickly copy objects around in the frame editor.
No one? Everyone has! Nifflas' game Knytt Stories is 100% tile based, he even posted an example of how the editor worked:Quote:
Originally Posted by TheSynapse
http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=76135
Yeah, for level editors, it's really just best to make your own. I also don't know what GB's tile editor thing is like... but it seems like a feature that is odd to have built in.
Each game is different and it really depends on what you're needing... which is why it's better to just make your own editor. They are actually really simple to make, and can save you a lot of work in the long run. You'll end up needing only a single game frame that you can load your levels into.
making a pacman game is not as easy it sounds... I'd start with something simpler if you're just starting out.
If I got a nickel for every time someone said they wanted to make a "simple/basic" version of a popular game, I would have a whole lot of nickels.
I want to make a simple <insert game here>
If only it were that simple. :p
It's like saying "I want to make a simple bulldozer... I mean, not like... all the bells and whistles... but just you know, a basic bulldozer. Should be no sweat right?"
When I create mazes and dungeons, or RPG worlds or similar stuff, I've used this technique. Not sure if this will help but it should be related.
http://www.create-games.com/article.asp?id=1869
Yeah, painting the tiles in MMF editor. So that rather than having about 12 different objects or whatever, you had one solid object and then just painted different tiles onto it. The different types of wall would almost act as different brushes.
It's something that's in Game Maker 8.0 and I'm surprised that it's not in MMF. Just also wondered if there was something I could use that I just didn't know about.
This seems like an extremely old topic, but I thought I'd provide an answer anyways. Even if TheSynapse solved his problem one way or another the thread didn't end like that.
One way to create an easy to use maze game exploits a feature of MMF2 that might have even been there before MMF2! The ability to add a backdrop of an active object, and for when that doesn't suffice, the overlay and surface objects. If you have an active object which stores multiple tiles either as separate animations or as separate frames, then you can cycle to those frames or animations during a loop. You start with an array object or the dungeon object, using the array object you can either load pre-built maps which use numbers within a 2D or 3D array to correspond to different tiles. A 3D array can be used to load tiles on multiple layers, so as to provide a parallax effect with different speeds or simply to provide a background layer, colliding layer, and an overlay layer. If you have sufficient math skills you should be able to provide algorithms which can generate a map on the array based on what you want. After you have your array setup (assuming you go this route) you can run a fastloop (it won't be that fast) with the number of points on the array, from here you can cycle through each of the points and start drawing. The other method would be to use the dungeon object (which I have not yet figured out how to use) it should allow you to generate dungeons with various sizes and grid sizes, and although I'm not sure why you can't simply run the "paint" event, but there is a separate even for pasting to an overlay. And that brings me to the main method of drawing which is pasting to backdrop and blitting to overlay. In the case of pasting to backdrop or adding a backdrop, the method is to set the position of the active object with the tiles in it, and then setting either its frame or animation to that tile and then pasting to backdrop or adding a backdrop. Neither of the backdrop options create a new object but simply add the object as if part of the background, from here we can say that it will be pasted as an obstacle, which will allow us to tell when an object collides with any of the places that were pasted to. The problem with pasting the active is it will disappear if you have a scrolling frame, and the backdrop leaves the window. Thankfully if you use "Add backdrop" it will remain even if it leaves the window. The problem with both of these is if the backdrop is not within the window it will not be taken account of for collisions or overlaps (there is an option for these collisions in the frame properties, but it doesn't work as well as it says it does). This is why I prefer to use the overlay object or the surface object. The surface object has all of the features of the overlay object and much much more, but while it is in view, especially at large sizes, the surface object will often slow down your application. This is why in this case I will suggest above all, the overlay object, with it you can use the dungeon object or blit an active object to it, and it will collide while parts are totally out of the window. All of this can be said of the surface object, but because of the surface object's additional features it isn't as fast. At some point someone apparently created a "Tilemap object" and a "Tilemap viewport object" but I haven't looked into these enough to see how they work in comparison, so I would suggest that you compare for yourself. These are my solutions to the problem of creating a tile-based maze game with optimal use of objects.
There are some parts of that, I didn't check beforehand, so just ignore the last 4 lines. I don't know how to edit or delete the post either though, so I'm in a bit of a bind.