Sidescroller tile based game

Java 2D
#1

Hello!

Sorry for my bad english skills :stuck_out_tongue:

I started making tile based side scrolling game couple days ago. I started with character control because I wanted to make it good as possible because its have been flaw on my games always. :>
So now I want to make map which scrolls horizontally and vertically.
First of all is it the best way to do this, by using tiles ?
if so, I have couple questions.

I started by making 2 dimension array which contains 0 = walkable and 1 = not.

should I make another array which only contains tiles on screen? and couple rows and columns outside screen. Then just update array when moving on.
or can I just make big map and move everything on screen?
or what is the best way to keep good performance?

and what about collision? should I just make rectangle for objects and use intersects? and only test it for tiles that are close to player.

What about graphicsā€¦ should I use same tiles as graphics which Iā€™m using for collision or make another layer for graphics ? also Iā€™m interested how hills can be done.

also I would like to hear if you have good techniques for tile based game or some good links where I can get more information.

thanks :slight_smile:

#2

Good references for Sidescroller

#3

Thanks, great link. Got some new ideas from free files but Iā€™m still kind a confused.
Probably need to buy that book soon if Iā€™m not getting this work :stuck_out_tongue:

Would be nice if anyone have really simple ā€œsource codeā€ that would have.
character like a circle or something.
scrolling tiles(only painting tiles on screen)
and collision detection to tiles.
and probably that buffered images thing, I read that it helps with flickering.

I have been fighting with this for over week now :D.

cheers!

#4

Glad that help. I havenā€™t tried to make this kind of game so I canā€™t suggest more.

#5

I would do it like you suggested, but instead of filling the two dimensional array with integers, I would fill it with Tile-objects that contain data about texture, position, walkable and so forth. By doing this you can calculate which tiles to draw and which to check collisions on. (Depends on the resolution of the screen, so you have to take that in consideration when you implement the algorithm.)