Say hello to Mappy

Greetings all,

This week, I've been fixing some bugs in SwinGameSGK.NET annd have also completed the MappyLoader module for the SDK.

Here is a screen shot of the MappyLoader in action:


For those that don't know, Mappy is a Tile based Map Editor which allows you to create levels for 2D Games with relative ease. It allows you to create both static and animated tiles ( the screen shot doesn't show it, but the waterfall is actually animating).

As for MappyLoader it has the following features:

-Loading Maps from Mappy using a custom made exporting tool.
-Drawing of the Maps
-Supports both static and animated Tiles.
-Highly Optimized Collisions functions, that can be used to check if your sprites are colliding with the map. The collision will even return which side of the sprite the collision occurred so the user can take appropriate actions after the collision depending on where it collided.
-An Event Layer, which is basically a special layer made in Mappy which allows you to literally 'Paint' Events/Triggers/Spawn Points etc. You could think of an event as a place for spawning your characters, enemies, items, but also places that can be used as triggers for special events in your game, such as falling off a cliff and dying when you hit an Event at the bottom of the cliff that is designated as a Death Event so to speak.

I'm currently working on Exceptions for the SwinGameSDK so that debugging our games and even the development of the SDK itself will become significantly less frustrating. Once this is done, the SDK should progress many times faster than it currently is, since we won't be wasting vast amounts of time trying to work out where an error has truly occurred.

Anyway that's all for this week,

See you next time.

Stephen Holdsworth