Tools for creating level maps

[mcgeezer]

Hi All,

Back in the day I used to use a map editor called TUME (The Universal Map Editor), but it hasn't been updated since 2000 and the compatibility is stuffed.

Are there any good mapping tools that would do the same thing for creating large map areas with object mapping and event stuff?

Happy if it runs on either Windows or Amiga.

Any help appreciated.

Geezer

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Hi All,

Back in the day I used to use a map editor called TUME (The Universal Map Editor), but it hasn't been updated since 2000 and the compatibility is stuffed.

Are there any good mapping tools that would do the same thing for creating large map areas with object mapping and event stuff?

Happy if it runs on either Windows or Amiga.

Any help appreciated.

Geezer

Check out Tiled

[OmegaMax]

I use tiled for most retro development,done with tiled

[ Show youtube player ]

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by OmegaMax

I use tiled for most retro development,done with tiled

[ Show youtube player ]

Nice one, thanks for the info - looks really good so will give it a try.

Nice Python support too.

[phx]

I can also recommend TilEd. It does nearly everything you will ever need and allows custom properties for tiles and maps. We are using it for our current game development and even define all sprite animations and collision boxes with it.

The biggest pro is that it is open source and portable. It wasn't difficult to build a NetBSD version from source (depends on QT4).

What I am missing is a 90 deg. rotated map format, where the rows of a column are written, not the columns of a row. This is often useful for horizontally scrolling games.

[Bastich]

Tiled is great. I am using it for my Iridium game. Add a load of layers do a bit of scaling (custom draw routine) and you can make some amazing parallax effects

[Shatterhand]

How do you export a tiled file to use with an Amiga project? I am curious now. I was going to write a map editor at some point in Blitz Basic for my future projects.... I wonder if could use Tiled instead.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

How do you export a tiled file to use with an Amiga project? I am curious now. I was going to write a map editor at some point in Blitz Basic for my future projects.... I wonder if could use Tiled instead.

There’s a python example showing how to export the maps.

Very useful tool this. No need to write a map editor.

With a bit of work i can even import arcade tiles and maps.

[phx]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

How do you export a tiled file to use with an Amiga project?

Usually an Amiga game doesn't want to parse the XML files, which TilEd generates, for several reasons (too complex, files are unnecessarily large).

So I have written a small, portable C program which converts the XML output into the native map and animation formats of my game. You can do the same with any language you are most comfortable with. And when using Makefiles this is just another part of the automatic build process.

[alkis]

While we are on tiled...I've played with it very little, but this (altered example) of plugin outputs assembler (and not binary) format.

@phx If you change the y/x order at loops, you'll probably can make it saving columns first

from tiled import *

class Amiasm(Plugin):
    @classmethod
    def nameFilter(cls):
        return "Amiga assembly files (*.avasm)"

    @classmethod
    def shortName(cls):
        return "amiasm"

    @classmethod
    def write(cls, tileMap, fileName):
        with open(fileName, 'w') as fileHandle:
            level = 0
            firstTime=1
            for i in range(tileMap.layerCount()):
                if isTileLayerAt(tileMap, i):
                    tileLayer = tileLayerAt(tileMap, i)
                    if firstTime==1:
                        firstTime = 0
                        line = ';\tMapSize: '+str(tileLayer.width())+'x'+str(tileLayer.height())+'(='+str(tileLayer.width()*tileLayer.height())+')'
                        print >>fileHandle, line
                    line = ';\tStart of level '+str(level)
                    print >>fileHandle, line
                    line =''
                    for y in range(tileLayer.height()):
                        tiles = []
                        for x in range(tileLayer.width()):
                            if tileLayer.cellAt(x, y).tile() != None:
                                tiles.append(str(tileLayer.cellAt(x, y).tile().id()))
                            else:
                                tiles.append(str(-1))
                        line = ','.join(tiles)
                        line = '\tdc.b '+line
                        if y == tileLayer.height() - 1:
                            line += '\n;\tEnd of level '+str(level)+'\n'
                            level += 1
                        #else:
                        #    line += ','
                        print >>fileHandle, line

        return True

Save it like ~/.tiled/amiasm.py

[phx]

Wow! Those Python plugins are really a powerful extension to Tiled!

I did some Python code before (mainly for web pages), but I always prefer C when I have the choice. Indeed my converter does the mentioned y/x translation for the game.

(And my internal map format is not just tile-numbers as bytes, but I save the map as words, with some more bits for extra information (tile is solid, tile-type, animations ,etc.)).