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This is the tricks tutorial for LEVEL-EDITOR v1.01 (c) Henrik Stokseth, 1999.


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Introduction:

You think Level-Editor is too simple to be used for any really cool games?
Perhaps you will change your mind after reading some of the tricks explained
here. Anyways, I recommend making games more advanced than just using a
static fourways scrolling single-layer tilemap as a background. *yuck* :-)


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The black art of tilemaps:

I still remember someone suggested that i should implement lightning and
transparency effects to the draw_tilemap_layer() function. Quite unnecessary.
You need a buffered screen update function anyway. Applying transparency or
lightning effects on many tiles needs CPU power, too much. One cannot expect
everybody to sit with a Pentium 200 or? The solution is simple:
Draw the layer you want to add the lightning or transparency effects to, to
an empty bitmap. Then you blit it to the screen using draw_lit_sprite() or
draw_trans_sprite() depending on which effect you want. See? Much faster...

Also someone suggested dynamic tilemaps. You can quite easily change the 
contents of a tilemap once it has been loaded to memory. It doesn't change 
the contents of the tilemap file itself, so it is quite safe to do it.
To change the tile at a given position in a tilemap you should use the 
set_sprite_number() function. By combining this method with timers you can
also animate the tilemap.

Also you can add parallax scrolling to your game, quite easily.
Parallax scrolling means scrolling the different layers at different speeds.
This method is often used to give the illusion of depth and perspective in
games like Super Mario and Worms.

I hope this has been of inspiration to you. This simple tutorial was written
with the purpose of giving you ideas on how to write more advanced games.
If you still want to do something that you can't do easily using Level-Editor
why don't you tell me? Most likely I will either assist you or add some stuff
to the helper functions. You are also quite welcome to hack around on
TILEMAP.H yourself, but have a backup ready. I won't help you fixing what
you have managed to ruin yourself.


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