Games Afoot Software

Well the past few days has seen a lot of coding effort for what seems to be little to show for.  However, I have now changed how I’m going to do tiles, and editing and all of that.  Essentially you can copy groups of tiles by holding shift (in the map area, upper left corner), and dragging a box around the tiles you want.  Then you simply left click to “draw” that group of tiles.  To erase it’s the right mouse button.  There’s only a little catch.  It only erases if there’s a tile in the tile group you copied.  If the tile was empty, it won’t do anything.  In any case it was rather straight-forward once I figured it out.

I’ve also changed it so that the map is only in the upper left corner (as I mentioned above) via viewports.  It was kind of screwy dealing with at first, but I finally got it.  Next you’ll be able to use a tileset that’s preloaded, and copy tiles from it to the map.  It’s got to be preloaded because of the way xna treats data.  It will compile your image/sound files into it’s own format.  In the level/map editor, you’ll be able to choose from various tilesets that are pre-loaded.  The point will be in the future allowing user created content on the xbox 360.  Of course this doesn’t mean you can make a game with my system on the xbox, but rather making levels for an existing game (and hence existing graphics).  In any case here’s a quick look.

Click on the image to enlarge, the red area is a “brush” (or group of tiles).  That little small bright red square is the cursor, which doesn’t have graphics right now.  On the right you’ll be able to check different things, maybe set map properties, etc.

With a little help from my friends… (cue Beatles music) — I’ve figured out how to handle tile stuff. Basically you’re going to have the tileset panel, that you are able to select tiles by dragging a selection box. Then a “brush” is automatically created, then you simply “stamp” or draw it onto the map. On the map you have to hit shift and click-drag, to select, otherwise it will draw on the map… to erase you’ll use the right mouse button to erase where there were tiles in the brush. I’ve seen this in action and it seems quite simple, and easy to use.