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Status: Beta
Introduced in: 0.0
Refactorings: 2
Developed by: Freerider, Treefinger
Latest iteration in: 0.3
Latest iteration by: Treefinger

The Map hierarchy is just recently formed and the chinks might not have been straighted out. It consists of:
• Map
  An abstract class able to represent any kind of map.
• TileMap
  TileMap extends Map into a map representation using tiles. This class handles plain 2D maps seen from above and uses a simple algorithm to draw them out.
• IsometricTileMap
  IsometricTileMap extends TileMap and generally just supplies a different paint routine to draw the Map isometrically. Read more about this algorithm on drawing isometric maps.
• Tile
  Used to represent any kind of Tile. Has functionality to house items, objects, characters and subworlds.

Both tile maps and isometric tile maps use the same XML format for loading and saving. It has four sections:
• Map information
• Tile definition
• Map definition
• Object definition

Map information
Here is all basic information for the map defined. The entry looks like this (for isometric tile map, for a tile map, the only different is the exclusion of "Isometric"):

<IsometricTileMap

name="blacksmith" width="13" height="13" tileSet="tilesets/default/default.xml" tileWidth="64" tileHeight="32" shape="2">

• name
  The name of the map, could be anything
• width, height
  The width and height (in tiles) of the map
• tileSet
  Which tile set to use, defined as a Sprite file
• tileWidth, tileHeight
  The width and height of the tiles in pixels
• shape
  The shape of the map:
  0 - Flat map
  1 - Torus map (wrap both x and y)
  2 - Wrap around x
  3 - Wrap around y

Tile definition
This part contains definitions of the tiles that are used to make up the map. The entries look something like this:

<Tile index="grass" treadableValue="0" elevation="0,0,0,0" spriteName="grass"/>
• index
  Just an abstract name for this tile
• treadableValue
  0 - characters can walk on the tile
  1 - characters can not walk on the tile
• elevation
  Not commonly used, used for specifying the height of the corners of the tiles. Experimental.
• spriteName
  The name of the Sprite that holds this tiles graphics. Sprites are defined in a separate Sprite file, read more about this at Sprite hierarchy.

Map definition
Here, you define your map using the index defined in the previous section. Each x row on a single line. For example:

<ground>
grass,grass,road,grass,grass
grass,grass,road,grass,grass
road,road,intersection,grass,grass
grass,flowers,road,grass,grass
</ground>


Object definition
Here you define all the objects of the map, they can be either static objects or items. Static objects are defined as this:

<StaticObject GraphicalObject="objects/buildings/forge/forge.xml" tileX="3" tileY="2" treadableValue="1"/>
• GraphicalObject
  The file to the graphical object that should be placed.
• tileX, tileY
  The location of the object in tile coordinates
• treadableValue
  If you can walk on the tile after this object is placed or not (0 - you can, 1 - you cannot)
Items are defined like this:
<Object tileX="3" tileY="3">
<Item name="Short Sword" quality="100"/%gt;
</Object>

• tileX, tileY
  The location of the object in tile coordinates
• name
  The name of the item, must be defined in the global item list.
• quality
  The starting quality of the item

Example map
Here is an example of a complete map! (this might not be openable in your browser since it is xml and the dtd is not co-located here, but open it in a text viewer and it'll be fine)

Blacksmith map