Elysian Shadows

I know that tiles are best if their height and width are powers of two, but is there a standard size that is commonly used? Also, I have noticed some sprite sheets have big buildings and objects that are beyond the size of a normal tile. What is a good way to handle these? I would assume that one would just break these objects into multiple tiles.

mattheweston wrote:I know that tiles are best if their height and width are powers of two, but is there a standard size that is commonly used? Also, I have noticed some sprite sheets have big buildings and objects that are beyond the size of a normal tile.

Power of two is still a good idea for any texture. 32x32 is common, 16x16 for more detailed things such as pickup-able items.

mattheweston wrote:What is a good way to handle these? I would assume that one would just break these objects into multiple tiles.

Exactly.

It can be tricky to layout the tiles neatly without practice. I suggest looking some tutorials. Anyway, I usually have blocks of 3x3 tiles, with the middle tile being one texture, and the surrounding tiles being another - say water in the middle, with sand on the other tiles, but blending in, like a little pond. I suggest making some base tiles first, basic textures like path, grass, sand, water, and make them tileable - so you can cover an area with them. It can get really complicated, but with some foresight and planning you shouldn't have too much trouble. Try and leave some extra space, as you might well discover that you need more tiles, and it can be a pain to try and squeeze them in. Also, with textures like grass, make a few variations to help break up the repeating pattern - a little foliage here and there can make all the difference.

I probably won't be making my own tiles with the exception of crappy programmer art tiles. =) I'm just trying to figure out how to take a tilesheet and determine how to break it up into tiles and load it into an engine.

Something like thishttp://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/18885.htm seems easy and straight forward, but what if the tiles aren't divided up like they are here?

I may also be getting sprite sheets and tile sheets confused.

texturepacker.com i think it was. it puts all your art into a tilesheet and then gives you an xml config with the locations of each sprite. of course you need to manage things yourself eg Image1 isnt very useful, but CharLeftAnim1 is a bit easier to follow

I'll check it out. Is there support for XNA or can I just take the file it generates and copy the data ?

mattheweston wrote:I'll check it out. Is there support for XNA or can I just take the file it generates and copy the data ?

C# has libraries that can be used to parse XML into objects. It should be fairly easy to use output of texturepacker.