Map prototype

Basically, when I think of creating this tile based game. All I’ve been thinking is how to create the Map. I’ve learned something at http://www.tonypa.pri.ee how to layout a tile based map. Here is a prototype of the map:

Well, All you can see are squares in it.. nothing special. But what matters to this is the design pattern for the map. I have learned this since I created my first working game in java which is a maze puzzle game. This approach is to represent the map as an Array, an array of tiles. And each row and column value for the array consist of a boolean value, either true or false. Why true or false? Well that determines if this tile is walkable or not. This boolean value is the basic implementation of the tile based game. Now, since I want to have a professional approach regarding tile based games… I have learned advance approach regarding this implementation.

Below is a working sample of a tile based game using array:

http://oos.moxiecode.com/examples/zelda/index.html

Credits to tonypa for the tutorials

Tile based game development

Before diving into coding the game, lets dig in stuffs regarding tile based games. Why would I want to use tiles anyway? Are tile based games easier to make or perhaps they are more complex then art based games? Is Flash good for tile based games?

Tiles were already used long-long time ago for making games. It was the time, when computers didnt have speeds of GHz and hundreds of MB memory. Slow speed and limited amount of memory meant game makers had to use their brains and create clever ways to make games look better and run faster.

So, you want to put nice background into your game, but the picture would be too large and make game very slow. What to do? Slice the picture into tiles! That’s how I was able to think of a tile based MMO game development.

Above are some examples of games using the tilebased concept just to give you an idea on my game development.

Flash and Tiles

As we all know Flash is vector based, so Flash files have small size and you can resize them. So, you wont need tiles at all to create game? Well, you can easily do art based games in Flash, but when your game area gets bigger and you want more features, you might be in trouble. Some things are so much easier to do in tile based games (isometric view, pathfinding and depth sorting to name few). Dont forget, tile based games have been around for a long time and much of the theory is usable with Flash too.

Sad part about tile based games in Flash is, that we wont benefit much from the drawing or timeline parts, our game is made with actionscript and basically we just have bunch of code to create, move and modify images on the stage.

Its also good idea to use bitmap images as tiles graphics. Yes, we could draw everything inside Flash and have the vector graphics, but when the game is run, player has to calculate the vectors on screen and we dont want anything to slow down our game. Bitmaps are pre-rendered and usually they look better too. If you want to import bitmap tiles into Flash, its usually best to save the images as GIF files with transparent background (for objects).

Enough all of this… and I will get started on the development :))

credits to:

Game Development Updates via Blog

From here on out. I will be posting my game development and updates here in this blog. This can be useful for future references and Development progress.

Basically, I got this idea from Susanoo. A game developer in shogunwars. His game development really molded the game story. He posted game updates with a story line attached like the State of Shogunate