Orthogonal Orientation and Layer types

ImNotEven

Feb 25, 2016 at 3:59 pm

I'm new to game development and pixel art and from a video I'm watching on setting up a game world they say I need to use a tiling program that allows me to set the tileset orientation to Orthogonal , with a right down render order ,and saved as a base64 tile layer format.

I also need to be able to add a tile layer, object layer, and occaisionally an image layer but don't see any way of doing that in this program. Is there a way to do this? Anyone have any workarounds using pyxel edit or is it even necessary?

I'm using LibGDX to develop a game if that matters.

CandyFace

Feb 25, 2016 at 4:47 pm

Hi ImNotEven

There is no tile orientation available in PyxelEdit, though that shouldn't necessarily be required either. making orthographical ie. looking from a top, side, front perspective game assets is entirely possible in PE, you just have to draw in the view you wish to manually. You're not working in a 3D space, which means that you're not limited to a specific orthographical view.

It is not possible to save or export in base64 format, only json, xml and txt.

I'm not sure what you mean about tile layer, object layer and image layer. You can store your sprites on separate layers, so essentially you could make a "tile layer", "object layer" and "image layer" like below, but i'm not sure if that is what you mean.

ImNotEven

Mar 9, 2016 at 8:25 pm

Thanks for the reply, it is informative.

As far as what I mean by the different types of layers:

It seems LibGDX uses special properties in special types of layers to allow the programmatic access and assignment of properties to objects like blocks, the ground, and enemies. For example, if the 2nd layer I draw objects in will spawn enemies, I could draw "rectangle objects" around those in a special type of layer called an "object layer" and use a LibGDX method chain as follows to access each object in that layer:

for (MapObject object: map.getLayers().get(2).getObjects().
        getByType(RectangleMapObject.class))

Tiled, a Map Editor has a tool that allows you to draw shapes like that in those special layers which then allows me to access them in my code and interact with them through programming, like assigning an enemy there based on the position of that box, or spawning a coin when a player hits a special block with an object around it.