Right now I just wanna try to make a prototype of a game where you can walk around in a 2D world with first person view (like 2D dungeon crawler). I'm using SFML 2.0 for now. I already had the very basic idea on how to create map for this game, but the work are too tedious. I need help so that I make the most efficient way in generating/editing the 2D map.
If you are good at this, please help a newbie out :)
Yes! But actually, I was inspired by this iPhone game: http://www.undercroft.com/
Looking at Legend of Grimrock and comparing it to Undercroft, Legend of Grimrock looks more "3D-like" rather than 2D, which is far beyond my what I want to do. I think, if not mistaken, Undercroft is more simple at that. So my prototype of 2D first person world should be below the standard of that of Undercroft.
If you want efficiency in making levels, you need a dedicated tool - you need to program a level editor.
For this 2D POV dungeon-crawler you can make something simple based on diagrams. Each node in the diagram represents a place that the player can move to. Each node has four directions, each direction being a screen. So at each node the player can turn around and decide which way to go.
If you move 'forward' on a certain screen, it'll lead to another place\node on the diagram.
It's very important that-
A) You have this editor showing you thumbnails of each of the 4 direction screens per node.
B) This editor allows you to playtest a level quickly so you can go back and fix whatever's necessary.
If you want efficiency in making levels, you need a dedicated tool - you need to program a level editor.
Thanks for bringing up that idea.
Though, to me, that sounds complicated. I've never program any editor before. Do you have any recommendation of tutorial on how to make such program, or any said editor program that is free?
It's a very interesting assignment, and it's not that hard once you understand what you have to do.
But anyone who follows a professional methodology will recommend that before you make something from scratch, you look for something that can do the job already.
I'm not familiar with any dungeon-crawler SDK, but then again I'm not particularly knowledgeable in this genre. Maybe in some dungone-crawler enthusiast forum, or modding an existing game with mod tools?
If you work on an editor and engine and make them good enough, they may even be desired by other people such as yourself that want to make a game with this style.
In any case, you've never programmed an editor before. It's a GUI app, like MS-Paint, Notepad, Word, Excel - that is, it's an application that has an interface built with the OS's GUI controls (menus, panels, buttons, checkboxes, spinners).
In your case, along with all your menus and buttons etc. you'd also want to have an OpenGL 'canvas' control that you use with SFML to render your editing area - that diagram and nodes discussed before, with thumbnails etc.
First you design your application with pen and paper, away from the keyboard. You write\sketch how you want your editor to look, what kind of menus and buttons it'll have and how it'll work for editing.
Once all the design is in place, you need to implement it in actual software. For this you can pair up QT with SFML - QT is a very good GUI library, comes with a lot of modules and has a visual editor for you to place controls and handle layout. There should be more information in the SFML community forums as well.
if you already have gui components in the game, you can use them to build the editor, and avoid having to deal with 2 gui api's for the project (or having to learn windows app programming as well as your graphics API). also that way you can build the editor into the game itself. while there may be circumstances where a stand alone editor is desirable, its often easier, and provides more functionality, to build an editor into the game, or as a link-able module.
link-able module.
What did you mean by this?
I got the rough idea of what that is, but still, I may be wrong.
a linkable module is basically a library or hunk of code that you can link into an app like a library or DLL.
technically, .lib, .obj, and .dll (and the like) are linkable modules.
as an example:
the modeling and animation tool for CAVEMAN was originally a built-in editor in the game. At the time it was easier to build it into the game than as a stand alone app. Later, i wanted to use it in Airships! So i put it in its own .cpp file with it's own .h file. now its a module that can be linked into any c++ app.
putting it in its own module was not 100% clean cut. the game must supply a mouse pointer texture ID, a yardstick texture ID, and a cube mesh ID to the module. the game is responsible for providing those assets. the game and modeler both use the same underlying mesh. texture. model, and animation databases and code library.
Here is how i would do it:
use the doom engine (already published with source code for many different platforms and api's) and adjust the movement there "blockwise" as in a dungeon crawler.
The advantage is that you can already use very good level editors and in the future you could also create non-square level parts.
