[XP] Multiple Autotiles (or something similar)

[KK20]

So Google searches proved to be of no help. I thought someone would have done this by now: allow the user to have more than 7 autotiles for their maps. I've been thinking it over, but couldn't come up with a great idea.

In my Advance Wars engine, I have a lot of tiles that need to animate. I still want to be able to access these tiles with tile_id. Also note that I would like this to be easily editted (I plan to release the engine for others to tweak and play with it).

My original idea was to create a graphic that contained all the animated tiles and their respective animating frames, then, when drawing the map, check each tile_id for a specific ID and draw the 32x32 graphic onto the Map's bitmap. Then, animate these graphics every 0.5 seconds (how would I even know what tiles need updating? Store the information into an array?). I thought about editting someone's Tilemap class and change how autotiles worked, but wasn't sure if something like this could be easily done that way.

Grateful for any ideas (or a script if you somehow found one).

[Blizzard]

We have actually discussed something like this for ARC, but as far as I remember, we have decided that we will not implement too many autotiles due to some reasons. You'd have to read the ARC Community Feedback thread for that info.

Most Ruby Tilemap implementations do have an autotiles component which is updated every X frames. You should check out F0's Tilemap implementation.

[Heretic86]

I dont know if this will help at all, but maybe switch out the existing maps auto tiles for another one and override the maps auto_tile tile_id settings?

[KK20]

Actually thought of something at school and tested it later to find a good solution. In Spriteset_Map, I can use a blt on @tilemap.tileset to replace a specific tile on the tileset. The change is made throughout the map. Pretty much all I have to do now is configure which tiles will animate and call upon another graphic filled with the animated tiles to extract 32x32 graphics from. Then update this every few frames.

Or I can just create another tileset with the animated frames and change the map's tileset. Still thinking about it.

I haven't tested this for lag, but I think this is my best bet for animated tiles (side note, I'm more interested in animated tiles than autotiles; it's just autotiles are the only tiles that can animate by default which annoys me).

[Zexion]

If only interested in tiles, then why not make an event with the graphic of whatever tile and set up a custom move route that plays an animation.

[KK20]

1) That would be extremely tedious for such a simple effect (we're talking hundreds of events)
2) I'm only using events to be placeholders for pre-deployed units
3) When it comes to implementing the Map Builder into the game...well, you get the idea
4) Defining property ownership and manipulating the events to fit to this is more work

My last post pretty much sums up the idea I currently have (I was surprised it works). It's really only a matter of testing for lag and see which method is better. Of course I'm still trying to figure out the best way to create my animated tiles. Thinking of making 4 tileset graphics to represent each frame of animation. Also need to think of the best way to write the code for this (it must involve the use of a CONFIG such as an array of tile_id's).

Probably first need to find tiles that animate though. The sea tiles (and anything else that animates) that I got from the Internet are just 1 frame of animation...so that probably means I'm going to have to find an emulator or ask someone to sprite them for me (or take a crack at spriting myself and scream in rage as it takes me hours just to make a beach tile look pretty).