Game map editor

Dear friends!

Today, we will explain the game map editor, an important tool in game development ".

Almost any commercial game has its own game map editor, whether you are a 2D game or 3D game. Of course, the map editor of 2D games is very different from that of 3D games. We will also explain the 2D game editor here today.

Before learning about the 2D game map editor, let's take a look at how 2D game maps are made up. First look at a photo:

Figure 1

What do you think of watching such a beautiful image?

Do not think too much. In fact, this image is composed of an array, which is indeed composed of a two-dimensional array. Of course, this two-dimensional array may be large, and some may have thousands of data records.

If it is defined by programming alone or directly on a two-dimensional array. It is not intuitive and difficult to modify, so game developers come up with a good solution. Write a tool to set these two-dimensional arrays, which is more intuitive and convenient to modify.

The game map editor is an internal tool. Generally, a map editor is required to write a game. It is relatively simple. You can also write it by yourself. Maybe I will write a game map editor later. But now, let's use others.

Below, I will introduce several excellent map editors, but their storage formats are different. To use the maps they edit, you must understand their map formats. Of course, this is a post,

Let's go!

Mappy

The map editor for the first push is mappy and the URL is http://www.tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php. It should be said that this is the most famous map editor. It has powerful functions and can be used to edit 2D and 3D maps (of course, 3D maps must follow the principle of tile placement ). Now y has a commercial version. If you need a powerful tool, maybe mappy is exactly what you need.

The map format saved by mappy is FMP extension. You may be a little worried now. How should I use this format map in the game? Don't worry. Someone has already written you about how to import and display programs on various game platforms. What you need to do now is to add the code to your program.

Mappy is as follows:

Figure 2

Tiled

The second map editor I recommend to you is tiled. This is also a well-known editor, but it can only edit 2D maps, all written in Java language, small and exquisite, powerful. And free to use, its official website is: http://mapeditor.org/index.html

Let's not talk about other things. Next we will talk about the tiled saved map format, which is an XML file.

XML is a powerful markup language. Its biggest feature is that it can define its own data types. Our map file is also defined by it. I didn't talk much about the use of tiled maps. I just said that many game engines have already written the code for importing maps. If you want to learn more about the tiled map format, you can write to it. As he said, You can find its email on the website.

The software interface is as follows:

Figure 3

Tile Studio

Tile Studio (TS. Is the third piece of software we want to introduce, Official Website: http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net /. I think it is also the best software. If you say it is the best, you can break it down (joke ).

The difference between this software and the first two software is that it adds a tile editing function. It is precisely because of this function that it is very suitable for beginners and of course suitable for programmers.

Because the above two software only edits the map, which means that you will edit the tile in other software (including ps, CD, and so on), and then import the map editor to edit the map, it may be nothing for a real artist, but what if you are a programmer? That's not easy. So I strongly recommend this software, especially for programmers.

In addition, this software also has the advantage of defining its own map output format. This is a good feature, which means I no longer need to worry about how those maps are defined. I define map data as a format that I understand, and it is clear to use maps in the game. Haha ......

For details about how to define a map, refer to its tutorial on the website.

The following is the TS interface:

Figure 4

There are several other software, but the features will be slightly inferior. I will list them below:

Games factory pack 3.1
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