Tile Engine Tutorial Part 4!!! - Map Editor!
We have just posted part 4 of our Tile Engine Tutorial by our own Kurt Jaegers! This installment replaces the current map array declarations with a simple map editor that will allow us to visually design and save a map using our tile sets. Part 4 also introduces to mouse input and control along with some basic text rendering... by the time you finish this tutorial you should be able to create your very own tile based map and save it... and reload it the next time you are in the application!
http://www.xnaresources.com
This is the best tutorial course about XNA in the web..
i hope it will be continued...
good work guys...
Thanks! Its good to see people are finding them useful! The series will continue! We will also be doing some tutorials on other types of games/engines too!
I've started working on Part 5... I don't want to promise what features it will have, but I've already added off-center avatar movement (so the player avatar can leave the center of the screen). I'm working on a couple of nifty features (that introduce new concepts, since that's what the tutorials are all about) but I'll keep 'em a secret for now. :)
- Kurt
I agree, these tutorials are just awesome. Thanks for making this available to the community like this, it is tremendously appreciated. I love the look and feel of your site and these tutorials are extremely helpful, nice job guys!
I want to add my appreciation for the tutorials as well. They have been extremely useful and I was able to use them to get me started on my own game. I just finished a contest to create a game in 2 weeks, and used XNA. Your first tutorials were a GREAT help in getting me started. Definitely some of the best XNA examples I have been able to find.
I used Hermann Hillmann's tileset over at http://www.molotov.nu.
I hope you don't mind, I used your knight avatar as a piece in the game. I gave your site credit in my documentation. I had tried posting to ask about this on your site, but was having problems using the 'comments' section. If it's a problem, I can easily remove it and use something else.
Actually the Knight avatar is just an icon from an icon collection we have licensed... it is commercially available at: http://www.incors.com after purchasing a license you are able to use the icons in projects that you are developing... I am not sure how the licensing relates to using one of the icons that a licensed user used in one of their projects but I doubt it is really a huge deal... basically I'm trying to say it isn't really our place to mind... you might take a look at the licensing and see if there is anything on the Incors site that would make you feel like you should remove it... I would think one format of one icon from the 2500 that they offer isn't going to offend anyone.
Either way, thanks for you kind words of support! It is feedback like that that drives us to get the tutorials out quicker! :)
www.XNAResources.com
OK. I will definitely remove the icon. I figured since it was in a freely available tutorial, it probably had no license issue. All of the games in the contest will go open source, so I will change the avatar when it gets released.
I visit the site everyday as I look forward to each installment. My first game was basically a proof-of-concept for something better. I use the tutorials as a basis to understand concepts. My background is in UI client/server development, so tilesets are something brand new to me.
Just a quick note saying that if use an external tile editor like
Tile Studio, or
Mappy, you wouldn't have to worry about implementing your own editor. They're both extremely easy to adapt into completely different systems. I'd really recommend checking out Tile Studio.
Rob,
Thats true but right now we are really just looking for ways to use/learn/teach XNA/GSE... The map editor presents us a chance to do some things that you might not get to if we were to use an editor from an external source... some of the techniques we learn here will help us in other areas... like accessing the file system to save and load maps, etc...
Jason Jaegers
www.XNAResources.com
Hey Yeagermeister,
when do you have part 5 of the best XNA tutorial?
greetings from germany...
Sorry for the delay on Part 5... I got sidetracked working on another XNA game/tutorial of a different type. I'm also waiting for Jason to get me a few graphics items I need to part 5 of the tutorial (I blame it all on him!!! :) )
Part 5 and our unannounced game/tutorial are on the way, but I don't have an ETA at the moment.
- Kurt
Keep em comin! These have been my favorite XNA tutorials so far
Thanks for the update. I was beginning to wonder if there was going to be more. Even so, the other tutorials and links on the site are very helpful. One of the best XNA resource sites out there.
Haha, always blame it on the gfx developer ;). Nice to see part 5 is on its way, although it's all quite self explanatory the tutorials have been nice to read. They're well written and actually produce something, for people new on XNA or better yet the game development scene this is definately what one would like to see.
I didn't quite get though why in part 4 it was mentioned that an IsInRect function wasn't to be found in the XNA framework but wasn't created for ease. Would have saved like writing 20 lines of code in that tutorial. But I suppose you're just not that lazy yet ;).
Will be looking forward to seeing what part 5 will offer.
