David Stockdale's Scrapcode

Tile Overhaul

When I initially tested the combat screen layout of my app I used extremely basic tiles in which walls and doors took up entire tiles.

This lead to my first piece of constructive criticism upon the very first showing of the screen to others: “the hallways are too narrow it looks cramped and unrealistic”.

Combat screen test with initial basic tile-set.

Thus began my mission to thin down the walls and doors to half the width of a tile (with the empty space being filled with whatever flooring the walls are placed upon).

While it wouldn’t actually free up more space for the player to walk upon (as the tiles containing walls would still count as walls) the thinner walls bordered by seemingly open space would create the appearance of wider hallways and thus more “realistic” maps.

This being my first experience in video game development you can understand why I was taken by surprise by the amount of tiles required for a simple display such as this.

The initial tile-set needed only walls, doors, floors and then versions of those same floors with players, monsters (not yet implemented in any of my tests), various poison gases, acids and other environmental hazards (initial tests only included a single poison gas) alongside a combination of each type of floor with each type of character and each type of environmental effect.

For example “blank”, “blank with player”, “blank with poison gas” and “blanks with player with poison gas”.

Tiles used in test of basic tile-set.

This new more complex tile-set required each and every possible orientation/placement of wall.

Such as a full wall on the left, right, top or bottom of the tile, then two of these walls coming together in a corner and finally half a wall forming a cube in one of the corners of the tile.

This along with each of these walls having a closed, open and occupied door which requires a lot of work before even adding poison gas or monsters.

Tiles used in test of new more complex tile-set.

There’s still a lot of work to be done on the layout of the combat screen for various sizes of phone screens.

Hopefully I can squeeze out some more space for the “story/atmosphere text here” box though…

Otherwise the user will have an difficult time scrolling through and reading it.

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