what map format would be best?

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

hello all, the style of game im trying to make is a 2d zombie topview game, i just started the project yesterday and am close to finishing up my main menu, then i will be moving on to the actual game, my idea is for players to move there character with wasd, and aim using the mouse, rotating the character based on which direction the mouse is pointed in, the first thing i need to do is load a map, but i havnt decided on a map format yet, i was thinking about using tiled, does anyone know of any other map formats that could be better for what i need?

my other question is how to do free movement, where the player can move freely around the map without just going up, down, left, right.

thanks.

#2

  1. Use your own! Simply random generate the map, place some random zombies and objects here and there. Put them all in a list, and update and render them.

  2. If you use boolean flags in your key listener, your main loop should update the player’s location based on which booleans are on. This way you can hold two buttons at the same time.

#3

thanks, i decided to just go with tiled.

i havnt started movement yet, but i read from a couple posts of people having movement problems but i guess ill just have to mess with it myself once i get around to working on movement

#4

To edit your tile-map manually, your can look into Mappy:

http://tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php

You could choose a mapformat that exports/imports well to your game then.

#5

Tiled isometric is my favourite.