The Tile Tool project

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The Tile tool project

The tile tool is a program that enables you to create a simple game level structured as squares. Has he lost it completely?? No, I'm thinking back at the good old days of the Commodore 64 and Amiga, here I would destroy my youth by playing computer all day long. It wasn't a complete waste of time, because that's how I got into programming - wanting to know how the hell they built the programs/games.

So, this is pretty much my 'own thing' but I decided to write this in english because I think many can benefit from this. The net is about sharing, so this is what I'm going to share with you :)

The tile tool project is my own project that has two main objectives:

To keep my programming skills tuned (we all know how work just becomes work).

Build a tool so I can create simple games.

So hopefully this is just as much about learning as it is about programming. I'm going to work on this now and then - there's no way I can promise to finish this and have a cool game in the end, just hoping to learn a thing or two. Hopefully you will too?

Ehhh.. What was it again?

The first goal is to design and code a tool that enables the user to build a simple game level. The main reason for doing this is simple: I suck at math and all the cool 3D games you see today use LOTS of math. Also, the scope of the project is simple and fun, this should improve the possibility of actually finishing the project - even if I have a million things to do.

The image below shows the idea: Create a shoot 'em up game. If you look closely at it you will see that the entire background can be made from squares! To illustrate this I've marked it on the next image below.

Typical Shoot 'em up game - here Uridium 2.

Uridium 2 screenshot with tiles marked

The same picture with red markings showing the tiles.

So the first thing is to create a program that enables the user to load image files and insert them into a level map. This level map must be efficient enough to scale to any size and hold any number of image files. I'm also considering having more layers so it's possible to create a 3D feeling or sense of perspective, but that is still under consideration. The level will be saved as XML.
When the program is done and we're able to manipulate the level we need to build a game engine capable of reading the level format and generate in-game graphics.

Well, that's pretty much what it's all about - but for now you should go to Strayfire and get inspired! :-)