Some questions on maps and Tiled

[stefanbeller]

Hello,

I thought about contributing, specially maps.

• Which tool do you use to convert the tiled maps to the format you are using? I've searched the sources, but couldn't find a tool for that.
• Which tools are you using in general? All files look very similar in terms of structure.
• Is there any documentation, about which long term goals should be archieved? such as a list of pending tasks?

Best Regards Stefan

[clintbellanger]

• Currently I'm using a manual method to convert tiled maps to my format. Not ideal, for sure. I save tiled maps using CSV layer data, and copy that layer data into the txt map files. Currently I'm using Tiled just to create tile layers, and then adding enemies and events manually to the map txt files. I think most or all of this could be done with object layers, so I probably could do a Tiled plugin for my format. I just haven't gotten to this yet. What I need to do is take a current map and try to build all of it in Tiled (with all the objects). If this proves existing maps can be done entirely in Tiled's interface, we'll use that example map to build a Tiled map format plugin.
• Not using a tool to edit these "ini" style files. Just plain text editor for now. Except for the items.txt file, I have a database and php script that creates most of this list.
• The Issues list here on GitHub are short-term goals. I don't have long-term goals posted yet.

As for long term goals, there may be something on that coming soon. I'm working with concept artist Justin Nichol on concept art and color design for the entire game world based on this map progression: http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/blog/20110706

That list shows 12 required tile sets. Maybe the two existing tile sets can be improved to fit the new look and feel, but they may have to be redone (actually, the two existing tile sets might be used for side quest dungeons/caves). I hope to take time soon to explain these long term goals.

[stefanbeller]

Thanks for that answer. So I will take a look at a tiled plugin, which suits ini style format :) I just wondered if there is something done for it yet.

[clintbellanger]

Jaderamiso started on a plugin a while back: http://www.mediafire.com/file/sffwkt06yjgfa0c/osare%20plugin.rar

Linked from http://opengameart.org/content/osare-v010-released

I didn't get to experiment with it too much; I didn't have time to figure out a Qt compile environment etc. I think it mostly handles the tile layers.

[clintbellanger]

If a Tiled plugin is something you'd like to help with, I can take the time to build a whole Flare map inside Tiled, along with the desired output .txt version.

[clintbellanger]

Here's a slightly out of date tutorial (one release behind) on map creation, on the old Google Code page https://code.google.com/p/flare-engine/wiki/MapEditing

[stefanbeller]

If a Tiled plugin is something you'd like to help with, I can take the time to build a whole Flare map inside Tiled, along with >the desired output .txt version.

Yeah some kind of spec would be helpful ;)

I started with this http://www.mediafire.com/file/sffwkt06yjgfa0c/osare%20plugin.rar And it handles the tilelayers quite nice as of now. (needed some time to get it working with the latest tiled - 0.7 :) So now I'd start to get the details working, like object support.

[clintbellanger]

Attempting to build a spec map.

I'm building an object with various properties for an event. In my map file objects I need several properties of the same name (e.g. on one event I need several "mapmod" properties). Currently when I try to add a property of the same name as an existing one, it assumes I'm trying to edit the existing one.

Is it a planned limitation to enforce property names on one object to be unique?

[clintbellanger]

Here's a current spec map that handles most cases.

http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/tiled/dungeon_spec.tmx The map fully built in Tiled http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/tiled/dungeon_spec.txt How the output should look (works in the current Flare dev code) http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/tiled/tiled_collision.png http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/tiled/tiled_dungeon.png

[bjorn]

You can't have multiple properties with the same name, since they are stored in a map. This is mainly because it is easier to work with than a list of key/value pairs. Maybe a multi-map is a possibility, but I still imagine it would get rather nasty to try to change one of several values behind a certain key, or change the key of only one of these values.

Are you sure it wouldn't be easier to change the way you store the information a bit?

[stefanbeller]

maybe the export plugin should do it like this: In tiled you have: setting_abc=option1, option2, option3; And in the exported map it goes like this: setting_abc=option1 setting_abc=option2 setting_abc=option3

[clintbellanger]

Hm let me think about this. Here are current examples where I use repeated properties on single events.

• In my Caves Level 1 map there is a cave-in event. This triggers about 16 "mapmod" events to close off a corridor with new tiles and set the collision state on those tiles.
• In some boss rooms the treasure chests give multiple "loot" commands
• Some quest-dependent events might have several "requires_status" before triggering

One possibility is that events with the same property name are listed together. Example:

mapmod=collision,1,1,0,collision,1,2,0,collision,1,3,0,object,1,1,50,object,1,2,51,object,1,2,50 loot=random,5,5,3,random,6,5,4,item,5,6,135

(edit)

Yeah it looks like have had the same idea. That could work. I'll update the spec map with examples of these. Also I'll get up-to-date info about which of these properties can be repeated and what field types they have.

[bjorn]

Hmm, "mapmod" sounds like a job for special layer, so you can visually create the caved-in section. But in general the issue remains.

Sometime soon I hope to replace the primitive property interface we have now with a more advanced property editor. I should keep this issue in mind to see if it provides a good solution to it, but I'm not sure.

[stefanbeller]

A first version is found here: https://github.com/stefanbeller/tiled/tree/osare (the osare branch of my tiled fork)

Clint, is a certain order required in the object attributes set? In case a special order is not needed please verify, if this export-plugin covers the needs.

What about the map attribute 'spawnpoint'? That would (only if required) appear in map properties, right?

As of now I only push out exactly these object properties as given in your example. Are there any kinds of objects which might have some more? (The event type just pushes out all properties it can find, since that's a lot anyway)

A diff to the specified text file is found here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6520164/tiled/osare.diff.txt

[stefanbeller]

Well I started again at the import plugin as well. So I propose a change of the format to also store the complete list of tilesets: https://github.com/stefanbeller/tiled/commit/a18ac68a23e3921efcf2cad57af9868543f2d9aa

This makes sure that opening the flare map format can be done, but doesn't affect the flare parser of maps

[clintbellanger]

stefan,

Let me gather some thoughts on this. For various reasons, the way I handle single tile sets in Flare are handled as multiple tile sets in Tiled.

I think that the Flare format can have a [tiled] section that is ignored by Flare, but Tiled can use to stash settings it needs (especially tileset info, currently).

I think that importing Flare files are a low priority, I don't mind working in tmx and only exporting Flare format when it's ready. I know some users will disagree, as they want it to be very easy to add/edit maps.

Clint

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 7:33 AM, stefanbeller < reply@reply.github.com>wrote:

Well I started again at the import plugin as well. So I propose a change of the format to also store the complete list of tilesets: https://github.com/stefanbeller/tiled/commit/a18ac68a23e3921efcf2cad57af9868543f2d9aa

This makes sure that opening the flare map format can be done, but doesn't affect the flare parser of maps

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare/issues/100#issuecomment-2564690

[clintbellanger]

The export plug-in works great. It's in Tiled v0.8, I recommend people try it.

Tiled won't open the [map].txt files directly, and I'm ok with that. Map-makers should include their tmx files when distributing new maps.