First thing I’m planning to work on is putting together a simple map editor. This will allow me to outline some of the main data structures in the game – maps, tiles, items and monsters. It will also give me some hands on experience of working with SFML. I’m intentionally going to keep the game and editor designs and layouts very similar to minimise creating different sets of code for very similar functions. I quite like the idea of building the editor and game engine as a single program so that I can switch between designing and playing with a couple of key presses, hopefully speeding up game development. Editor features will likely include:
- Variable map sizes (max. 256×256) – plenty big enough in my opinion
- On-screen tile display for tile selection
- Map links – link overworld to towns etc
- Load, Save, Play options
- Small tile versions available for overview mode
- Properties for tiles?
I’m in two minds as to whether tile/object properties should be editable through the editor – this might be too much work for me. I’ll have a think about it anyway. Game data will be stored in simple text files for the time being – probably comma separated.