Tile Map Example Help

[masterassassin1398]

Hi guys.  I need some help.  Im trying to make a tile map game, using sfml.  Currently i am using sfml 2.1, the designing entities with vertex arrays tutorial for tile maps is really confusing for me.  I was wondering if anyone could break it down for me.  I know its a lot of work but it would be extremely helpful.  Thanks in advance.

[Ixrec]

If you could ask some specific questions about that example then we could help.

Have you tried building and running the example yourself?  Have you stepped through it in a debugger to see what's actually in the vertex array and how it got there?

[masterassassin1398]

No i havent tried running it myself.  I figured that i would need the texture for the tiles.  I will go ahead and try though.  Overall i dont have anything specific i am curious about.  I just need a more detailed walkthrough than what is offered.

[Hapax]

If you need tiles to use for the example and you are talking about the one in the Vertex Array tutorial, feel free to use these simple tiles:


The tilemap is stored as a one dimensional array of tile indices - each one represents which tile should be displayed. These tile are lay out from left to right but split every few tiles and moves down to the next row and starts the columns from the left again. It's a lot like typing/text wrapping.
The vertex array is just a list of all the vertices that hold the co-ordinates for all four corners of each tile.

[wh1t3crayon]

Why are you using vertex arrays for tiles? You're guranteed to only have squares, so sf::RectangleShape might simplify things.

[dabbertorres]

Except RectangleShapes are horribly inefficient compared to VertexArrays.

1 draw call vs width * height * z-indices or so of your map draw calls.

[Ixrec]

Why are you using vertex arrays for tiles? You're guranteed to only have squares, so sf::RectangleShape might simplify things.

This thread is about the tile map example in the tutorials, which is all about using a vertex array with a spritesheet so that you can draw the entire tile map in one draw() call, since that's more efficient than using a separate draw() for every tile.

Using sprites or rectangle shapes for every tile probably is simpler, but vertex arrays exist because this is a common and worthwhile optimization (assuming you have a lot of tiles).