How tile engines simplify the game design process and how to apply them to different game types.
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Final Result Preview
Let’s take a look at the final result we will be working towards:
Move your mouse to make the little square walk towards it, and click to make it jump. Hit space to change tile currently underneath the cursor.
Introduction: What are Tiles?
The simplest way to describe tiles is to show you images from games that have used them in the past. This is a portion of a screenshot from The Legend of Zelda:
When you look at older games, you can see that a lot of the art in the game is reused. The same tree appears twice, the same rocks appear twice, the wild grass is there three times on the screen and the fence is seen four times. And all the art is perfectly aligned to a grid. Each one of the little squares in the grid I drew over this screenshot is a tile.
Instead of making each level individually from scratch, the people who designed the Legend of Zelda decided to put the game on a grid. Then, they attached premade art to that grid. This method has a lot of benefits in game design.
Step 1: What Benefits do Tiles Have?
Most beginners who use Flash don’t know much about tile based methods and what benefits they ……..
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