Legacy GM technics for handcraft isometric levels (SOLVED)

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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Hey Guys!

I'm here to get new ideas on how can I achieve this... Currently I already tried some cases like:

  • Tiled Alone. Not even close to possible.

  • Used the TiledToBinary from @Mick. (This one kinda works good, but it's hard to get it configured at first... And maybe I'll hit one case on having many singular objects, difficulties on code special events inside the level, but for sure can work trough with some effort).

  • Used GMare to build ortho maps and then translate then to draw isometric sprites via scripts. (Not very good since it's hard to get the real view of the map during the build phase and hard to set different types of sprite walls/floor etc... but is relative easy to do)

  • Using ortho maps in Tiled is also a final option, but will hit the same problem using GMare

Port the game to GameMaker Studio 2 also it's not a option.


You guys have some ideas ?
 

JackTurbo

Member
Could always build your own editor. Most maps in isometric based games are essentially just 2D arrays filled with terrain. Could build an editor that saves the data to a ds_grid and then outputs it to an ini file or something?

Probably only worth the time investment if youre planning a pretty big game though.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Could always build your own editor. Most maps in isometric based games are essentially just 2D arrays filled with terrain. Could build an editor that saves the data to a ds_grid and then outputs it to an ini file or something?

Probably only worth the time investment if youre planning a pretty big game though.
Yes, in fact I started something based on the isometric tutorial inside gamemaker.
The fact it's that the time I would be spending on doing a perfect level builder for my needs, I would be better doing level designs and etcs....

I really dont want to spend much more time on tools if is possible not to.

But yes, this is also an option.... but the very last.
 

YanBG

Member
Can't think of any better than making in-game editor. Would allow players to create their own maps too(think of house wall placing in a survival game). I was planning implementing that myself. Tiled etc is useless for placing houses and enemies, no?

For the terrain loading is either a huge csv file to grid, but that's pretty slow(i've tried it) or color coded bitmap. Green pixels' value is grass tile(can be varied when actually placed), blue is water etc. I've used this premade image for the turn-based strategy province map. Load it and read from a buffer for fastest. Then you just ship all level folders and files with the game, easy?


Similar editor from another game i follow: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...etric-rpg-hardship.113429/page-5#post-5412110
 

CMAllen

Member
Can't think of any better than making in-game editor. Would allow players to create their own maps too(think of house wall placing in a survival game). I was planning implementing that myself. Tiled etc is useless for placing houses and enemies, no?

For the terrain loading is either a huge csv file to grid, but that's pretty slow(i've tried it) or color coded bitmap. Green pixels' value is grass tile(can be varied when actually placed), blue is water etc. I've used this premade image for the turn-based strategy province map. Load it and read from a buffer for fastest. Then you just ship all level folders and files with the game, easy?


Similar editor from another game i follow: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...etric-rpg-hardship.113429/page-5#post-5412110
The bitmap/png method is fine if your tile data is relatively simplistic. If you've got tile textures and masks that are separate, can be drawn using arbitrary color values, or alpha values, etc...that method starts breaking down. And, yeah, it's only fine for the basic tiles. Doesn't do anything for walls and so forth. You'd have to create an editor to handle all of that, so you might as well make an editor to handle all of it -- the basic tiles aren't that much more work.
 

YanBG

Member
You can add a lot of values to the macros for all the walls, no need to use only the built-in colors. Although i've only loaded bitmaps and haven't written/saved any.

Loading from txt/ini 200x200 grid might freeze the game even.

But saving the grid to json will work best actually. I heard it here, ds_grid_write is said to have issues.

 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Can't think of any better than making in-game editor. Would allow players to create their own maps too(think of house wall placing in a survival game). I was planning implementing that myself. Tiled etc is useless for placing houses and enemies, no?

For the terrain loading is either a huge csv file to grid, but that's pretty slow(i've tried it) or color coded bitmap. Green pixels' value is grass tile(can be varied when actually placed), blue is water etc. I've used this premade image for the turn-based strategy province map. Load it and read from a buffer for fastest. Then you just ship all level folders and files with the game, easy?


Similar editor from another game i follow: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...etric-rpg-hardship.113429/page-5#post-5412110

Hey Yan, thanks for the ideas.
I'll take a look on the forum.
But I really want to avoid to code this kind of thing... This will be very time consuming indeed. I dont have any doubts about it...

In fact with the Tiled2Binary you can even put objects and etc inside the level, not only floor tiles and walls. You should take a look there, it works well, in fact it's the best one I ever seen to use Tiled with GameMaker Studio.

Tiled2Binary has a binary reader inside it.... and it can locate the related object at you project and put it on map. The problem in this solution is that I'll need to create a single object for every piece of map of mine.... And you can relate that they are not low count.

I tried the bitmap color reading to generate fixed rooms when I generate the procedural ones... This is already implemented but I think this have no use in this case.

As @CMAllen said, this only works if you have simplistic tile set for the map.

I want to do complex and well designed maps... this kind of solution will not bring the satisfaction(or even a good pace) to create handcrafted maps.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
I would build a in-game level editor if the player would use it...

But this is not the case now in the new direction of the game.
 

YanBG

Member
Fair enough, i'll keep an eye here if other people share their experience.

Aren't there any map editors on the marketplace?

Btw how many maps do you plan to have and should it be so multiple people can design them simultaneously?
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Fair enough, i'll keep an eye here if other people share their experience.

Aren't there any map editors on the marketplace?

Btw how many maps do you plan to have and should it be so multiple people can design them simultaneously?
I dont have all that planed yet... The idea is to have one location for each boss.... Until now I have something between 4 or 5 bosses / mini bosses .
The idea is to have 10 or 12 so we can build a good story with satisfying length.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
I was able to achieve this level of level design using the tile2binary solution

 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
For sure Tiled2Binary is the best option to choose. At least for 1.4

 

YanBG

Member
@NeZvers thank you! I already use 2d grids and draw the tiles with iso offset but this looks interesting.
@hippyman yeah i was asking for the room editor. In 1.4 it's pretty bad already for hand-crafted maps.
Port the game to GameMaker Studio 2 also it's not a option.
That sentence made me wonder because a friend with GM2 asked me if it's good for hand-crafted iso, i told him to make the maps first in Tiled.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
I can assure... Dont buy GM2 if he wants to do handcraft isometric maps...
 
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