Z-ordering using Tiled / problem using sprite groups

Libertine1832

Hello everybody,

I am currently working on a little project alike to traditional RPGs, so think orthogonal tiles like in Final Fantasy / Chrono Trigger / Zelda aLttP for example. Main part of this tile engine is the example code coming with Gideros (sewers) and I have been able to include character movement (pixel perfect), simple collision detection (rectangles in an object layer) and applying the outer borders, so the map won't pan out of the screen so far. The characters are drawn in a specified layer between normal objects and those which should appear above the hero / character.

As my character sprite is taller than one tile, I've stumbled upon the problem that tiles drawn in the "upper layer" always are on top of this sprite, even if the character is in front of a tree for example.

My first idea was to add each row of the map individually to the scene so that - depending on the y-position of the character - he is always drawn above the tiles which are "behind" him. This turned out to be not that trivial because of my lack of understanding the principles of sprite groupings and the behaviour of the tilemap class. Simply putting the "allLayers:addChild(row)" inside the vertical "for loop" didn't do the trick, as sprites seem to be grouped or something.

Another option would have been to assign z-order values to each tile and sort the layer group (but then I would have to add each object as a separate layer)

Does anyone has a simple solution to this issue? I've got the feeling that it should be easier to be done

talis

Hi , i found 2 possible related posts about it. Hope they will help your problem.
http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/2220/layer-or-z-index-programming-practice/p1
http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/1521/z-axis-or-stage-drawing-order#Item_2

Libertine1832

Thanks for the links, but this isn't solving my problem. Not the sorting itself, but creating different layers (e.g. per y-row) with the tilemap class at least don't work as I would expect them to. If it is possible to put every row on a seperate stage the only things that are to be sorted would be moving objects like the player and npcs.

The first link is using box2d which I am not and draws every object seperatly, which would be quite the nuisance with tiled (at least if I am not overlooking something)

HubertRonald

Hi @Libertine1832

I don't know if I understood well your question, but I would do the following if I use Tilemap

engineGame = Core.class(Sprite)   function engineGame:init() -- first self.background1 = Bitmap.new(Texture(...)) --* --* self.camera = MyCamera.new() --Your camera implementation   self.tilemap1 = TileMapMultiple.new(..., ...) self.tilemap2 = TileMapMultiple.new(..., ...) -- If you want to do it   self.camera:addChild(self.tilemap1) self.camera:addChild(self.tilemap2) self:addChild(self.camera) --* --* self:getInfoMap() --------------------------------------------- -- after, you must to implement in the order -- you want to do it, in my case --------------------------------------------- self:walls() self:foes() self:coins() self:hero() self:trees() --* --*     end   --------------------------------------------- -- get information about map --------------------------------------------- function engineGame:getInfoMap() --storage Object Names for use it after self.objNames = self.tilemap2:getObjectNames() -- I use self.tilmap2 it's my last layer otherwise you use self.tilemap1   -- check objects names for i=1, #self.objNames do   -- information about walls for physic if string.find(self.objNames[i],"wall")~=nil then local r1, r2 = self.tilemap:getObject(self.objNames[i]) table.insert(self.objWall,#self.objWall+1,r1) table.insert(self.proWall,#self.proWall+1,r2)   -- information about enemies for physic elseif string.find(self.objNames[i],"foe")~=nil then local r1, r2 = self.tilemap:getObject(self.objNames[i]) table.insert(self.objFoe,#self.objFoe+1,r1) table.insert(self.proFoe,#self.proFoe+1,r2)   -- information about hero for physic elseif string.find(self.objNames[i],"hero")~=nil then local r1, r2 = self.tilemap:getObject(self.objNames[i]) table.insert(self.objHERO,#self.objSB+1,r1) table.insert(self.proHERO,#self.proSB+1,r2)   -- information about coins or any object for physic elseif string.find(self.objNames[i],"coin")~=nil then local r1, r2 = self.tilemap:getObject(self.objNames[i]) table.insert(self.objCoin,#self.objCoin+1,r1) table.insert(self.proCoin,#self.proCoin+1,r2)   -- information about trees or any object over Hero without physic in my case elseif string.find(self.objNames[i],"trees")~=nil then local r1, r2 = self.tilemap:getObject(self.objNames[i]) table.insert(self.objTrees,#self.objTrees+1,r1) table.insert(self.proTrees,#self.proTrees+1,r2)   end   end   end   --[[ --------------------------------------------- -- your functions notes that no matter the order in which they are developed, they will be executed according to how you have defined in function engineGame:init() --------------------------------------------- ]]   function engineGame:walls() --... end   function engineGame:foes() --... end   function engineGame:hero() --... end   function engineGame:coins() --... end   function engineGame:trees() --... end

in tilemap of Gideros (this is an script of them (TileMapMultiple) and you download in this forum)
I added the following functions that I used in

function engineGame: getInfoMap ()

As I show below

function TileMapMultiple:getObjectNames() local names = {} for i=1, #map.layers do local layer = map.layers[i] if (layer.type == "objectgroup") then table.insert(names,#names+1,layer.name) end end return names end   function TileMapMultiple:getObject(name) for i=1, #map.layers do local layer = map.layers[i] if(layer.type == "objectgroup") then if layer.name == name then return layer.objects, layer.properties end end end end

I hope this can help you