VB.NET Game Programming Tutorial (XNA) - PART 5f: Tile Mapping & World Design (Visual Basic .NET)

TUTORIAL 5 - In this segment we will be designing a world screen, map base, and tile class. We will then create a simple island terrain with mountains.

In this intermediate Visual Basic .NET game programming series we'll be exploring many of the exciting game development features that XNA 4.0 provides. We'll jump right into setting up project for a Super Nintendo styled RPG game.

PROJECT TOPIC SHORTCUTS:

SOURCE CODE:

Tip Jar:

:-)

[alexrinehart]

These tutorials are absurdly helpful. 
There's no whining, arrogance, or lengthy intro music, everything is detailed enough to help, but not enough to bore, and the author is stupidly responsive. I can't wait to see what else you do with this or RISE in the future!

[RSRadiowithWolf]

Dear Aardaerimus,
You freaking ROCK my world!! These tutorials have been epically helpful to play around with game design. Thank you so much for sharing all this wonderful information with us :)
-RS Wolf

[xFusionLordx]

Good job, It is starting to look like a game... Looking forward to the next segment!

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

Hopefully, I'll get some time to work on it.

As for a map editor, you can always experiment with the code we've worked on. The trick is simply knowing what's needed in the Tile class/structure and thinking of creative ways to populate those tile values in the the TileList(). You can get an idea of how to do this by looking at our MapBase class which shows me creating a full map with a default terrain (water), then selectively (and inefficiently) adding other values to form the island.

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

I've had very limited success with 3D. I made a 3D object in Blender and imported it into XNA, moved and rotated the object with keys. What I really had trouble with was texturing the objects, and adding a height-mapped terrain. There are sooo many steps involved and all I had were C# references to look at and try to translate.

As for map editors, I've actually considered doing another tutorial series on building a simple map editor. TileD map editor may actually work, Kalamus built one, too.

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

Hi there, ricande. :-) I'm only using the GetTileSource() function as an example, because we aren't using a map editor. If you use a map editor to create a map file and load values from that file into your tile structure you shouldn't have to use the Select Case anymore.

[AardaerimusDAritonyss]

Hello, Lennon Azzi! I haven't tried using TileD, though as long as you can see the format of the map file there's no reason why you couldn't use it to populate your tile values. The important thing is knowing the order and types of data being loaded so that you can match it in your map loader and populate the tile properties. :-)

[joshjh-xyey]

I chose the GameSize to be 1280, 720. I followed your instructions precisely and now the your game the water fits the GameSize but my one only fits a corner i want it to fit the whole form

[HatakeAzzi]

I wanna thank you for the nice job you did! But I have a little question: Is that possible to load maps created in Tiled Map Editor, for example? So how can I do it, any idea? Or can you make a tutorial about this? :P
Really, thanks for all the vids.
Cheers. (excuse me my bad english)