Comments on: DSP TODO

By: Shazz

Shazz — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:54:47 +0000

hiya Danzel !
For sure XML is boring to do but useful to everybody… and path finding is only a coder thing… 😀
I looked at it a few years ago when planing to write a demo (autosolved fifteen puzzle)… qutie interesting…

And if you look at DesktopTD, the path finding has 2 usages :
– the creep uses it to compute the shortest way to reach their goal (and it is recomputed in realtime eachtime you remove/place a tower for each creep enemy
– if tiem you place a tower it checks that you did not block the creep path e.g. it is not a blocking tower

Quite cool isn’t it ? There is a lot of opensource A* implementations… Videogame programming classic 😀

But don’t feel bad, do that you like 😀

About TileStudio, it should be able to define enemies path, currently you’ve got 3 interesting stuffs :
– you can assign ONE mapcode to a 16×16 block : could be used to define a path step or as I did the # or _
– a tile has 3 layers
– you can define bounds to a tile (ounds are “walls” in your map that indicate where objects can move)

so for basic path it could be used, for some more complex paths (mutiple paths fro example), it may becoem difficult. I guess another piece of software to only define (and test !) paths may be needed if we want an user friendly editor for it… Well let see that later 😀

By: Danzel

Danzel — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:25:00 +0000

Jeeze you really want me to add path finding don’t you! 😛
I’m waiting on a Sourceforge project ATM, applied for it on Friday, so hopefully I’ll know soon.
They have wiki’s now so you’ll be able to put it up on there.
From my looks on the tilestudio front, it looks like it should be able to support planning the path in it? (for levels using paths)

Once I have the project I’ll draft an XML schema for levels including support for multiple paths, pathfinding, etc. 🙂

By: shazz

shazz — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:45:10 +0000

DesktopTD like level, using TileStudio but without tiles, only with a 512×512 background image :

http://tmpstore.free.fr/DSP/desktop1.png
http://tmpstore.free.fr/DSP/desktop2.png

By: shazz

shazz — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 11:41:45 +0000

Eh eh Danzel 😀 A* is cool 😀

I have started another level based on Desktop TD for testing the future stuff 😉

About the TileStudio, I have modified the convert.vbs to fill more data in the level.txt file.

And I can write another tilestudio tutorial which works too even if you don’t want to use tiles and you already have a 512×512 picture… but I don’t know where to write it…

Would be nice to have a website to share all of that…

By: Danzel

Danzel — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 22:19:54 +0000

Path finding was about the first idea I scrapped when I was designing DSP 🙂
I hope to see it materialize in the future, we will see 🙂
Will do some more investigation into tilestudio now I think 🙂

By: shazz

shazz — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:37:33 +0000

Eh eh Danzel, if I want to motivate you to use some XML configuration files I have to show you how powerful TileStudio is ! 😀

and another new “I’d like DSP to…” : implement some A* path finding algo to have the enemies looking for a new path line in TD Desktop 😀

really cool 😉

By: Danzel

Danzel — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:10:36 +0000

Seriously cool shazz!

By: shazz

shazz — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:25:24 +0000

http://tmpstore.free.fr/DSP/tilestudio.png

By: shazz

shazz — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:24:59 +0000

a little screenshot of the editor

By: shazz

shazz — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:19:05 +0000

Hello,

I have customized TileStudio to generate DSP maps
get it there :
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7aw6vg

Instructions :
1. Unzip the zip
2. Run TS.exe
3. open the river project as example :
File->Open then go to maps subdir and choose river.tsp
4. Click rivertd tab on the bottom
5. Do CTRL+Tab (Toggle map/Tile editor)
6. As you should see a map is composed of
32×32 tiles of 16×16
7. To set a tile as tower-able or not :
select with the ‘selection tool’ (dotted square) the block of tiles you want to set as tower-able (= you can put a tower there) then click on the left button 00
8. Set the Map Code (hex) as 23

9. Do set non tower-able tiles, do the same but set the Map Code (hex) as 5F

ALL tiles should have a map code

10. Then go to Code menu, select ‘Generate Code’
11. in the maps dir, a level.map is created
12. in the windows explorer clic on convert.vbs
13. a level.txt file is created, you’ve got your map !
14. edit it to add other required parameters as usual

have fun