Level Editing Off the Beaten Path | Hacker News Reader

Level Editing Off the Beaten Path

matthewminer.com

13 pointsmminer8 comments

I think storing maps as images is quite common actually for simple games not made in a game engine that handles maps.

You can also use the drawn map as a template, and add random details (random variants of each tile). Also, you'll quickly find you want to use more sophisticated autotiling which handles multiple tile types meeting, and special cases. Here's an article about autotiling by defining rulesets which goes into more detail: http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=166

Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read. As far as procedural level generation goes, one of my favourite articles on the topic is this one about Spelunky's level generation: http://tinysubversions.com/spelunkyGen/. It's always impressive to see how combining a few simple rules can yield complex and varied levels.

That technique is older than a lot of game devs. ;)

Alternatively use some ASCII painting tool and use characters for the indexes.

Yes! There are lots of nice ASCII painting tools around. In particular, there's no difference between an ASCII art editor and a roguelike map editor, except for the name :) Thought there was a nice JS one somewhere, but can't find it.

Do you happen to have any particular recommendations for ASCII painting tools? I took a web-based one called ASCII Paint [1] for a spin and first impressions were positive.

[1] http://www.asciipaint.com

I definitely believe it. It's inspiring to read about the techniques and hacks used at the dawn of game development, so many of which are still useful today.

Re: ASCII painting, recently I was looking into using an ASCII drawing tool like Monodraw [1] for creating ASCII maps. A format as portable as plaintext is appealing.

[1] http://monodraw.helftone.com

Well written, but as others have mentioned, this technique is almost as old and well-known as game development itself.

However, it's still pretty cool and refreshing to use. See e.g. Notch' Ludum Dare streams where he makes his levels in Paint.net: http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/293084461 about 3:23:00 in.

Agreed, with all the complexity that game development entails, it's liberating to use a technique that's so "lo-fi". Interesting seeing Notch put his levels together. The speed at which he moves from Paint to running level is something to aspire to. Our workflow was fast, but not that fast.

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