Tilemaps?
by Thomas Pereira · in Torque X Platformer Kit · 06/25/2007 (9:48 pm) · 4 replies
I haven't seen this addressed anywhere and it is something I really would like to know about. From what I've been reading, from the code and docs, and from what I've been experimenting with...an object must be assigned to some sort of platform component. That is all fine and good, but what about tilemaps? What happens when you want the collisions of individual tiles (which has the wonderful property of a sort of concave collisions when you consider the object as a whole).
I guess what I'm asking, although I think I already know the answer, is there any support for tilemaps and collisions directly, or do you need to make a thousand individual scene objects with collisions on it corresponding to however many scene objects? Surely the limitation of that approach can be seen when talking about...say...dynamically removing tiles from a map to simulate effects like digging or effects like craters (considering the fact there doesn't seem to be support for collision holes).
I guess what I'm asking, although I think I already know the answer, is there any support for tilemaps and collisions directly, or do you need to make a thousand individual scene objects with collisions on it corresponding to however many scene objects? Surely the limitation of that approach can be seen when talking about...say...dynamically removing tiles from a map to simulate effects like digging or effects like craters (considering the fact there doesn't seem to be support for collision holes).
About the author
#2
06/26/2007 (12:22 pm)
I sort of figured what you said, I was just pointing it out. It would really add to ease of development in addition to adding some functionality in game play which would otherwise be somewhat difficult. Just throwing it out there.
#3
06/26/2007 (12:46 pm)
Understood. It's a very convinient feature. In fact we talked about it for quite some time. Hopefully we'll have time to take another functionality pass at the 2D stuff before we do the big 3D release. 
#4
That sounds great!
07/29/2007 (12:06 pm)
Quote:Hopefully we'll have time to take another functionality pass at the 2D stuff before we do the big 3D release.
That sounds great!
Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
The overhead of an approach like that in the platformer demo would be pretty significant for what would essentailly be the same functionality. In the case of breakable platforms, on the other hand, that's something that would obviously benefit quite a bit from the tile promotion system. In light of that we will probably end up implementing it when we get back around to 2D.
EDIT: It's worthwhile to note that you will always be able to get away with fewer collision shapes in your scene using scene objects rather than tile layer collision.