Chapter 10

Tilemaps

This chapter teaches how to use Tiled to simplify the level design.

Managing level design entails the creation of game assets, more easily done using a level or map editor rather than plotting each value manually by trial and error. LibGDX offers Tile Maps which works well with Tiled, a free and simple level editor.

A tile-based game lays out tiles in order to create each level. --gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com

A tile-based video game is a type of video or video game where the playing area consists of a small square (or, much less often, rectangular, parallelogram, or hexagonal) graphic images referred to as tiles laid out in a grid.

Tile-based games usually simulate a top-down, side view, or 2.5D view of the playing area, and are almost always two-dimensional. --wikipedia.org

Tiled is used to create levels. The figure below shows the level design of the game Rectangle Destroyer.

The figure below shows the tileset used.

Implementing tilemaps

Tile stores map files using eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which is a text-based file format that can be read by LibGDX and implemented into a game.

A new actor TileMapActor was created which applies Tiled map parsing with the game. In the end, the level designed can be loaded as simply as shown in the algorithm below.

val tma = TilemapActor("assets/map.tmx", mainStage)

for (obj in tma.getTileList("Starfish")) {
    val props = obj.properties
    Starfish(props.get("x") as Float, props.get("y") as Float, mainStage)
}

New Imports

import com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.camera - Base class for OrthographicCamera and PerspectiveCamera.

import com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.OrthographicCamera - A camera with orthographic projection.

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.MapLayer - Map layer containing a set of objects and properties

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.MapObject - Generic Map entity with basic attributes like name, opacity, color

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.MapProperties - Creates an empty properties set

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.objects.RectangleMapObject - Creates a Rectangle object with the given X and Y coordinates along with a given width and height.

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.tiled.TiledMap - Creates an empty TiledMap.

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.tiled.TmxMapLoader - Synchronous loader for TMX maps created with the Tiled tool

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.tiled.TiledMapTile - Generalises the concept of tile in a TiledMap

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.tiled.objects.TiledMapTileMapObject - A MapObject with a TiledMapTile. Can be both StaticTiledMapTile or AnimatedTiledMapTile.

import com.badlogic.gdx.maps.tiled.renderers.OrthoCachedTiledMapRenderer - Renders ortho tiles by caching geometry on the GPU.

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