Quote Originally Posted by Squize View Post
When it comes to plotting I create lots of 600x600 bitmaps ( Megatiles ). I then split the mc's up and burn them into the bitmaps, so both the walls and background are in the same bitmap ( Shadows are separate as we overlay them on top ).
I did a similar thing in Knights Quest, it means even though you snap to grid so it's like tile based, it's much more art based. For example we can use a font and write text on the floor, put a filter on it, rotate, whatever and it doesn't cost us anything in cpu time as it's just a bitmap when we display it.
Now that is interesting...I was thinking of the burning into bitmaps part, but more like each object is it's own bitmap, and then I blit the objects on/hall sections etc., since...well, how big are your maps? My initial concern is memory space :/

And where you use the plotting for the AI, I guess I'll create my own editor simply to plot in my AI pathfinding nodes (I'm big on AI, so I want to go all out on it) etc. Ah, nevermind, but thanks a lot for the ideas! I'll definitely do that, since now thinking about it, people have at least 1gb of memory these days that several 600x600 images definitely couldn't hurt. (You bake them during runtime, aye?)

(The more we talk about this, the more I'm drooling to get back on working on the game...and I love the fact that I've decided to go NAPE, instead of ****ing with my own collision engine, which took me about 3 months to set up :/ )

P.