Tilebased Game Questions

[Loffen]

My questions list:

1. What is the best map format?
I have seen tilebased games use mapformats like this:

MyMap;10;5
1111111111
1000000001
1002222001
1000000001
1111111111

The first line is the config line and the rest: 0 = grass, 1 = wall, 2 = water, etc..... Is this a good map format?

2. Storing maps in memory...
I read in some free chapter of a book, they stored each tile in an own vertexbuffer. But somewhere else i read that they stored the whole map in a vertexbuffer and just moved the vertexbuffer or something... Whats the best way here??

3. Displaying maps
Whats the best way to display maps?? When the player moves around, should i move the map or the camera and player?

4. Players (and buildnings ?)

1. Should i put all players/units in one vertexbuffer or in separate?
2. If I put all players in one vertexbuffer can i still moev and rotate each of them??
3. Should i put all buildnings in one vertexbuffer? Some of the buildnings as 'the super automated turret' need to rotate a little. Can i do this if all are in one vertexbuffer?

 

[samsmithnz]

You should direct this question to the isometric forums at gamedev.net, they'll be able to help you.

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

Heh.

I've got some answers:

1) I use the same format too, but u should do 1 thing: Seperate each entry with columns.

2) I have my own sprite class, and each tile is a sprite - so i use a vertex buffer for each tile, im not sure if this is memory efficient or not - but 1 vertex buffer can only hold so many vertices.

3)
-Whats the best way to display maps??
Store all the tiles into 1 map array and in a loop render all the tiles

-When the player moves around, should i move the map or the camera and player?
Have you done transformations yet? You should move the map . In my game, I keep the player stays centered on the screen. So I never move his position.

4) Again, I made my own sprite class - each of my players/objects/WHATEVER go in their own seperate vertex buffer. I don't think (although im not sure) that when you have multiple objects in 1 vertex buffer, you can rotate them individually. So I stored them in different vertex buffers.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[Loffen]

Thanks alot both of you!

Now as i know some efficent ways ill look deeper into vertexbuffers and code my own sprite class(?)...

--Loffen

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

Heh, yeah they're mainly C++ people , and half the time when you make a post, about 300 other people make a post right after you and your post is like in the 10th page .

The GOOD thing about that site is if someone does end up reading it, you'll get an answer within seconds - there are thousands of people at that site all the time.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[Loffen]

What is a title?

Ok, I fixed a sprite class. I am reading the file line after line, then i split each line into a multidimensional array. Like this:

MapTiles(row, tile) = TileNum

This gives me an array something like this:

MapTiles(1,1) = 0
MapTiles(1,2) = 0
MapTiles(2,1) = 1
MapTiles(2,2) = 0
MapTiles(3,1) = 1
MapTiles(3,2) = 1

How do you create a map from this from this?? Is this an efficent way??

BTW: I will try to move the camera and the player, after some planning i figured it will be easier to make a multiplayer thing if i can send player coords to the server...
BTW2: Do you know somewhere with nice 2D Collision detection docs??
EDIT: BTW3: Does someone know why dbmon.exe stops working with 9.0c?? Am i doning something wrong or did you experience the same??

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

heh,

btw2: www.vbprogramming.8k.com - look in the Tile Based Collision Detection tutorials (its with GDI+ but you should be able to apply the concept to d3d)

How do you create a map from this from this?? Is this an efficent way??

Here's what I did in my game:
for example you have this: MapTiles(3,2) = 1

You'd simply create a tile at (3,2) which uses 1.jpg..
mine works like:

for x = 0 to mapwidth
for y = 0 to mapheight
CreateATile( maptiles(x,y) & ".jpg", x*tileWidth, y *tileHeight)
next
next

Where the first argument is what bitmap is displayed where
the 2nd and 3rd arguments are the posijtion of the tile.

Ex: If x was 3, and y was 2..
"MapTiles(3,2) = 1" and tilewidthwas 30 and tileHeight was 30:

then the compiler would read it as

CreateATile("1.jpg", 90, 60)

The whole x*tilewidh, y*tileheight concept is simple - if you don't understand it i think i included some explanation in my tutorial

-The Pentium Guy

 

[Loffen]

Oh my! You site is uber bannered

About coll. det. I was thinking smooth movement (one pixel each time, not one tile...) is this way harder?? I read an article somewhere, something about a special way of coll. det., very easy, accurate and you can move pixel by pixel... (where i dreaming or could this be true?)

Got your example... . But my sprite class suddenly stopped showing the sprites. What am i doing wrong do you think ? Here it is:

Imports Microsoft.DirectX
Imports Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D
Imports Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.D3DX
Imports System.Math

Public Class FearGraphicsSprite
    Private pDevice As Device
    Private SpriteImage As Texture
    Private SpriteBuffer As VertexBuffer

    Public Sub New(ByVal lDevice As Device, ByVal ImageName As String, ByVal TopLeft As Point, ByVal Width As Integer, ByVal Height As Integer)
        pDevice = lDevice
        Load(ImageName, TopLeft, Width, Height)
    End Sub

    Public Sub Load(ByVal ImageName As String, ByVal topleft As Point, ByVal width As Integer, ByVal height As Integer)
        Dim Vertices() As CustomVertex.PositionTextured

        Try
            SpriteImage = TextureLoader.FromFile(pDevice, ImageName)
        Catch
            MessageBox.Show("Could not load image: " & ImageName, "Critical Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
            End
        End Try

        SpriteBuffer = New VertexBuffer(GetType(CustomVertex.PositionTextured), 4, pDevice, Usage.WriteOnly, CustomVertex.PositionTextured.Format, Pool.Default)
        Vertices = SpriteBuffer.Lock(0, LockFlags.None)

        Vertices(0) = New CustomVertex.PositionTextured(topleft.X, topleft.Y, 1, 0, 0)
        Vertices(1) = New CustomVertex.PositionTextured(topleft.X + width, topleft.Y, 1, 1, 0)
        Vertices(2) = New CustomVertex.PositionTextured(topleft.X, topleft.Y + height, 1, 0, 1)
        Vertices(3) = New CustomVertex.PositionTextured(topleft.X + width, topleft.Y + height, 1, 1, 1)

        SpriteBuffer.Unlock()
    End Sub

    Public Sub Render()
        pDevice.VertexFormat = CustomVertex.PositionTextured.Format
        pDevice.SetStreamSource(0, SpriteBuffer, 0)
        pDevice.SetTexture(0, SpriteImage)
        pDevice.DrawPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, 0, 3)
    End Sub
End Class

Yes we did think a little of the same. Saw your class somewhere on these forums...

EDIT: I tried your class too... still nothing

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

Oh my! You site is uber bannered

Hehe! that's the probelem with having a free site .

About coll. det. I was thinking smooth movement (one pixel each time, not one tile...) is this way harder?? I read an article somewhere, something about a special way of coll. det., very easy, accurate and you can move pixel by pixel... (where i dreaming or could this be true?)

This can be accomplished easily. Lets say the dude is on tile 20,20, and the size of each tile is 30x30. This means that he's on tile 0,0 - if he's on 50,50, he's on tile 1,1..

The algorithm to compute his position is pretty basic and you can figure it out when you plug in numbers:

TilePos = new Point( Math.Floor(Position.X / tileWidth), Math.Floor(Position.Y / tileHeight)

Floor, btw, rounds DOWN. So, e.g back to the 20,20 example:

20/30, 20/30 =

.666,.666 .. math.Floor would round it to
0,0 as opposed to 1,1.

That's the algorithm to compute the tile he's on. To move him, you simply eliminate the loop and use the same collision detection algorithm - with a few tweaks of course.. for example if the guy is at 40,40 and wants to go to tile 0,0.

After he gets to 29,29 he cannot move left anymore [ if you've set it so that he can't go to the left of 0,0] becuase 29/30, 29/30 -> 0,0 and if you want to compute collision for the tile to the LEFT of 0,0 (whcih is -1,0) it says "No" becuase that's not possible, and it wont let you move further left!... this requires a few tweaks like I said

Got your example... . But my sprite class suddenly stopped showing the sprites. What am i doing wrong do you think ?

Heh - .. did you render the sprite?

Yes we did think a little of the same. Saw your class somewhere on these forums...

 

[Loffen]

Yup i do render it:

Graphics.Sprite = New GraphicsSprite(Graphics.Device, "grass.bmp", New Point(0, 0), 32, 32)

Then in Render():

Graphics.Sprite.Render()

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

What matrices have you set? Be sure to set them right - on my tutorials i've set the View Matrix to OrthoOffCenterLH(0,1024,768,0)

 

[Loffen]

Poff... Feel suddenly small . The only thing i set looking like this is:

Device.Transform.Projection = Matrix.OrthoOffCenterLH(0, PP.BackBufferWidth, 0, PP.BackBufferHeight, 0.0F, 0.0F)

Device.Transform.Projection = Projection Matrix??

EDIT:

I noticed that the order of OrthoOffCenterLH was not left, right, top, bottom but left, right, bottom, top. So therefore i changed my code to this:

Device.Transform.Projection = Matrix.OrthoOffCenterLH(0, PP.BackBufferWidth, PP.BackBufferHeight, 0, 0.0F, 0.0F)

Still no result though

BTW:

Hehe! that's the probelem with having a free site

http://www.freewebs.com/ is free. No AD's (last time i was there) the only thing is a little copyright line...

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

its VIEW not projection .
Projection is used for 3d to tell the device how the scene should be displayed (like, should you see 45 degrees of the screen, should you see 90 degrees.., aspect ration....etc)

 

[Loffen]

Tried both now...

Should i post my whole project??

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

Device.Transform.Projection = Matrix.OrthoOffCenterLH(0, PP.BackBufferWidth, PP.BackBufferHeight, 0, 0.0F, 0.0F)

The last argument shouild be > 0 I think. If it was 0, you're "Cutting off" all the objects with a Z which have greater than 0 and less than... 0 .

Put like... 5 or somethign for the last argument, it really doesn't matter .

 

[Loffen]

Did it like this (the same as you in Tutorial #2):

Device.Transform.View = Matrix.OrthoOffCenterLH(0, PP.BackBufferWidth, PP.BackBufferHeight, 0, 0, 10)

But guess what, Still no result... This makes me very maad...........

 

[ThePentiumGuy]

Turn off lighting:
D3DDev.Renderstate.Lighting = False...

If this doesn't work, paste your GameClass here .

Should i post my whole project??

Heh, your gameclass + your Sprite class (whcih you've already pasted) are the majority of your project so if you post the gameclass maybe we'll see whats up.

Could you clearly explain whats going on? Is it just not showing the sprite?

-The Pentium Guy

 

[Loffen]

Ahhhh!!! Got IT!!!!

I was using:

        pDevice.DrawPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, 0, [COLOR=Red][b]3[/b][/COLOR])

and NOT:

        pDevice.DrawPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, 0, [COLOR=Red][b]2[/b][/COLOR])

Rolling around on floor trying to struggle myself with some wires...

Thank to all of you who helped me so far...

--Loffen