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<< Back to Category List
| Tile Graphics Techniques - page 1 |
Contact info
To contact the author via email:
jmcintosh@iclub.org
Though this text is not shareware, if you find it worthy of a donation, I will
gladly accept any amount of money you offer (since I am a starving programmer
looking for an employer).
1427 Fairlane Dr.
Richmond, KY 40475
USA
This is my mother's address, since it is effectively permanent.
What's This Document (Not) About?
I wrote a CRPG for my Amiga and got about 85% finished when I bought my PC and
dropped the Amiga project to learn PC programming. The point is that while
that game was/is really cool, I have learned and developed much since then.
Here's my (partial) full disclosure :)
This document will cover graphics in the style of Ultima 6 (presumably Ultima
7 as well, but I have never played it-- read on). I will also discuss many
of the same techniques that Greg Taylor covered in his Tile-Based Games FAQ.
That is one reason that I have composed this document, because I found the
information in Greg's FAQ to be somewhat disappointing. I hope to present
some ideas that will advance those he overviewed. Granted, he covered lots of
things I won't cover here (roof tiles, hidden map areas, palette shifting),
but there are so many fundamentals that could be implemented in a better way,
I had to put out an alternate solution. Oh yeah, it is presumed that the
reader has a solid understanding of C programming.
While Mr. Taylor tended to emphasize the 640K barrier, I think that everyone
should get a 32-bit, protected mode compiler. Let's face it, the small
overhead of running a DOS extender with your protected mode program is
negligible in the face of the benefits gained. I feel it's a fair assertion
to assume that people who play games have at least 4 megs in their machine.
Catering to the lowest common denominator (i.e., 286/640K) is a good thing as
long as that denominator isn't too low. I think nowadays, a 486-33/4meg is
a decent denominator. The hassles of EMS and conventional memory simply
disappear when protected mode is used. I've never been more frustrated by
this situation than when I couldn't get Ultima 7 to run on my snappy Pentium
because I had to create a boot disk and still couldn't free the conventional
memory required (without purchasing a commercial memory manager). I own U7,
but I've never played it. That kind of annoyance can be avoided by simply
using a "modern" compiler, with the added bonus that most of the time, it will
run in the increasingly popular environment, Windows 95. (Sorry to be ranting
but that's another reason I'm writing this document :)
Note: I am assuming that you are interested in CRPGs since they are the most
common game genre to employ this sort of graphics. Of course, the techniques
can be applied to any game or genre (ie, a strategy game).
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