Can you pleeeease tell me how to do this?
I hate my map editing script right now. It just gets in the way. I'd assume all the enemies that you place have to be inert/follow flat floor or something, right?
This will not get you away from the map editor, hopefully it will get you away from the everything BUT the map editor (solidity is already defined, tilematching done, sprites are dynamic so no need to edit, all special functions relating to the player sprites functions are automatically copied to all maps)
You want to know how to do this for one of your projects? Basically you have to script it in.
For instance, I want to have a designer (me or someone else) be able to create a new map, place the tiles, place the sprites (by placeing tiles on an "enemy sprite layer") add in a playersprite and any special functions (optional), add in item pickups (just like placing tiles again on a "item" layer) then all you would have to do is make some transport special functions to get to and from the new map and you are done. Also, I could make it even easier by having a map template that is just copied whenever a new map is created. Then it would be: add tiles, done.
In order to do this, my script is constantly scanning the boarders of the screen looking for tiles on the "enemy sprite layer" that are not blank, if it finds one, it uses script to add the appropriate enemy/NPC sprite and delete the tile. The enemy sprite is then controled by script depending on what enemy it is. If the player runs away so the enemy sprite is off the screen, the script turns him into a tile again. (this is to save on system resources so their aren't 50+ sprites running around and getting tested for collisions)
Also, when the map first loads, the script creates the correct player sprite (so the content creator doesn't have o worry about designing one) or edits the current player sprite to be the correct one. All the appropriate special functions for the player sprite are copied to new maps as well (so player still shoots, gets hit, dies, etc)
If you wanted to do something similar for you game, it would definately require a lot of custom code to fit your particular genre/game. I think I have posted said project once before on these forums but all the code is in VB 6.0 not a .vbs file. Here it is again if you want to see what I'm talking about, just run the exe.
Dynamic Content Adventure Game Alpha