Best way to do a tile engine

[PsychoMark]

OpenGL?



But seriously, you could try to do it with BitBlt or something, but I don't think it's fast enough for fullscreen tiled games. If you really want fast (and I know you don't want to hear this), try learning DirectX. For 2D, I still recommend DX7. It's a bit though when starting, but once you get to know it a little better, it's easy (and fast ). In case you haven't heard of it yet, go to http://www.vbexplorer.com/directx4vb/, it's a great source of information.

[Dr. Cossack]

All right, I'll check into that website and give a try to Directx...

And I have a question about BitBlt, too. I began toying with it a few days ago, and it does the job all right, with the mask and everything... But when I tried, the source picture needed to be on the screen, or else the destination pic would show just like the original... Can't I make that original invisible? There has to be a way...

[PsychoMark]

Did you set AutoRedraw on the PictureBox to true? I think that solves the problem...

[kedaman]

Store the scroll offset vector,
in redraw routine inlcude the scroll offset, by in nested loops increment tile and screen offsets starting from scroll offset ending at scrolloffset + screen offset (assuming scrolloffset is in pixels, otherwyas it's tileoffset)after inner loop, reset inner loop increment to scrolloffset component
in the input routine (mouse or keyboard) add an offset to the scroll vector.

[Dr. Cossack]

PsychoMark: Thanks, that did the trick. I completely forgot about that option...

kedaman: Err, what are you talking about? I don't understand...

[Sastraxi]

Err, what are you talking about? I don't understand...

It's kedaman what do you expect?

But if you looked at it and read it through maybe once or twice, he's giving you an alternate solution for your problem (I think...)!

[kedaman]

alternative?

I thought you wanted some fundamentals of scrolling...

[Jotaf98]

All right, I had a simple tile engine in DX running at about 60 FPS, and after using this technique, it ran at 800 FPS!!!

Dim TileX as Long, TileY as Long
 
TileX = 0
TileY = 0
 
For X = 0 To 19
  For Y = 0 To 14
    'Here, the coordinates where you should blt to are NOT X*TileWidth and Y*TileHeight, but TileX and TileY. In this example, you're avoiding 600 multiplications with additions so it's a LOT faster :)
 
    TileY = TileY + TileHeight
  Next Y
 
  TileX = TileX + TileWidth
  TileY = 0
Next X

Try it, maybe the FPS won't be the same, but it will at least be 1000% faster than the old method

[kedaman]

Originally posted by Jotaf98
All right, I had a simple tile engine in DX running at about 60 FPS, and after using this technique, it ran at 800 FPS!!!

Dim TileX as Long, TileY as Long
 
TileX = 0
TileY = 0
 
For X = 0 To 19
  For Y = 0 To 14
    'Here, the coordinates where you should blt to are NOT X*TileWidth and Y*TileHeight, but TileX and TileY. In this example, you're avoiding 600 multiplications with additions so it's a LOT faster :)
 
    TileY = TileY + TileHeight
  Next Y
 
  TileX = TileX + TileWidth
  TileY = 0
Next X

Try it, maybe the FPS won't be the same, but it will at least be 1000% faster than the old method

ewww

[Jotaf98]

Is it sarcasm I'm smelling?...

[kedaman]

Originally posted by Jotaf98
Is it sarcasm I'm smelling?...

of course but never mind, there was a time when i did it that way too, but that was way back in the 90's

[Jotaf98]

What do you mean? How do you make it now?...

[Dr. Cossack]

Hey, I'm still at that level of programming, okay?

Jotaf98, can you just give me a sample of the BitBlt line that goes with that code? I want to make sure I'm not doing something bad :P

[Jotaf98]

Just call me Jotaf, ok?

(I haven't changed it because they won't let me do that )

If you already have a tile engine, all you have to do is replace the coordinates where the blting function is writing to the screen (I think they're called something like "DestX" and "DestY"). I can't give you the exact code, because it depends a lot on how you're storing the map

[Dr. Cossack]

All right Jotaf, I tried it today, and it worked pretty well The basic engine still isn't complete, so I can't tell how fast it will be at the end, but it does a decent job. Thanks

[Jotaf98]

You're welcome

[Oafo]

Private Sub Picture1_MouseDown(X...)
 Picture1.PlacePicture Image1.Picture, X, Y
End Sub

This is just a quick version, Image1 holds the tile. Also, make sure that AutoRedraw is True for Picture1.

[Jotaf98]

That's for VB.Net, right?

[progeix]

Originally posted by Jotaf98


What do you mean? How do you make it now?...

This post above was directed to Kedaman..


i'd like to hear the answer, too