Naturally I can't go around talking about every little detail and making everybody bored to death with the editor to the point that they lose interest. Funny, because I'll bore you all to death in here.
I've decided to screw the perl--just screw it. Not because I have anything against perl, but I know people just won't view it as "professional" if the tile wizard is a black-box application. Not to mention there's a crap load of other stuff you can do just building the tile wizard into the editor. So that's what I'm going to do.
Anyway, too tired now, I'll post more on the subject later.
Anyway, I've worked out the details at school. A level will consist of three files and that's final.
1) .map file. Stores the numbers and locations of the corresponding tiles.
2) .lvl file. Stores general information regarding stuff like level you enter after beating this one, background music, and other stuff.
3) .tst file (optional). If you choose not to use the default tileset, you'll create a TST (tileset) file. It contains information about which image will represent the tile and what attributes the tile has.
The tiles are a very important part of a moddable 2D platformer. Nobody will be interested if you have a solid and not solid attribute to choose from. I thought carefully and decided on the attributes that the tiles can possibly have based on popular 2D platforming titles.
solid - Can you walk through the tile? fluid - Can you swim in the tile? destroyable 1 - Can the tile be destroyed by a certain weapon? destroyable 2 - Can the tile be destroyed by a different weapon? destroyable 3 - Can the tile be destroyed by another weapon? death - Will this tile kill you in one hit? hazardous - Will this tile do damage to you?
----hazard damage - How much damage will the player take from this tile? slippery - Will the player slide on the tile? sinking - Will the player sink into the tile like quick-sand? animated - Is the tile animated?
----animation timer - How many frames before the next image is displayed?
----next tile - When the timer is met, which tile will take its place? alpha channel - How transparent is the tile? color - Will the tile have any color adjustments when rendered?
----red - red color adjustment
----blue - blue color adjustment
----green - green color adjustment bleed - Will collision with this tile make the player bleed?
----blood amount - How many blood particles will result from this collision? particles - Will collision with this tile result in particle creation?
----angle - At what angle will these particles be created?
----red, blue, green, alpha - What color/alpha will these particles be?
----amount - How many particles should be created?
That's it. If you feel that I've left any attribute out that would potentially prove certain things impossible, let me know.
I've worked pretty hard. As is if I can get all of these attributes to be editted and loaded, Null will be a helluva moddable game. I think I'll even personally have a go at it with the editor and all when I'm done.
NO! Null is already getting big enough. It wasn't ever meant to be this ambitious. I just really don't see any need to have slanted tiles. I think Null will already offer enough power and moddability without them.
I uploaded a beta/demo of the level editor so far so that I could show it off to some guys at school.
You may as well have a look too. Just don't tell me it sucks balls or anything becuase it isn't even almost remotely done yet. This is just a tech-demo.
I already have lots of things to add in mind and use space to pop the menu. The graphix for the menu and graphics in general are all going to change, they're just place-holders now.
