Using alphachars ASCII

[Sprybug]

Hey guys, have a question on using alphachars ASCII

 

So, I decided to put all my level tiles for all 9 levels into one PNG file, because doing each level separately maxes out the space I have for tile graphics after 5 levels.  Putting them all in one file will allow me to reuse certain tiles in different levels with a palette swap, allowing me to do all 9 levels using just 1 png for the entire tile set.  It's going to have 96 tiles in total, so I thought it'll probably be best to use alphachars ASCII to define the character set for the alphadata of my levels.  Now that I am going to do this, what's the order of the ASCII characters in this set, so when I make the level sections with alphadata, I know which ones to use where for the tiles.  That's about all I need to know.  Thanks!

[+SmittyB]

With that many tiles alphachars might not be the best way to proceed unless you have text near the left of the image you want to use it on.

 

You can think of alphachars as applying labels to the indices of your graphics data so that the first symbol represents the first tile, the second symbol the second tile, etc.

It doesn't matter if you use 'ABC' or 'xyz', they'll still represent the first 3 tiles and the only meaning is in how you interpret it.

 

In the end they're all just numbers to the 7800 so you might be better off just storing your maps as regular data, and possibly look into using Tiled to make that process easier.

 

[Sprybug]

10 hours ago, SmittyB said:

With that many tiles alphachars might not be the best way to proceed unless you have text near the left of the image you want to use it on.

 

You can think of alphachars as applying labels to the indices of your graphics data so that the first symbol represents the first tile, the second symbol the second tile, etc.

It doesn't matter if you use 'ABC' or 'xyz', they'll still represent the first 3 tiles and the only meaning is in how you interpret it.

 

In the end they're all just numbers to the 7800 so you might be better off just storing your maps as regular data, and possibly look into using Tiled to make that process easier.

 

I originally tried to define my own set, but was running out of keyboard characters before I could get a full 96.  In fact, I got 94.  The problem with using TileEd in my case is that you're forced to use PlotMapFile, which I can't do with my screen scrolling methods that require using PlotMap, because PlotMap actually has the capability to display what parts of the level you want along with perfect pixel placement.  If PlotMapFile had that capability, then I would definitely be using the other method instead.

[+SmittyB]

You don't have to use plotmapfile. When you incmapfile it'll set up a bunch of stuff in the background for use with plotmapfile but the actual map data will still be valid for the plotmap command. If you're pressed for space you could just use Tiled to set up the maps and then export that out to a CSV that you can copy and paste into your source code.

[Sprybug]

14 minutes ago, SmittyB said:

You don't have to use plotmapfile. When you incmapfile it'll set up a bunch of stuff in the background for use with plotmapfile but the actual map data will still be valid for the plotmap command. If you're pressed for space you could just use Tiled to set up the maps and then export that out to a CSV that you can copy and paste into your source code.

Looks like I'll need to do some experimenting in a new file to see what I can do.  I do use peekchar and pokechar as well to detect level collisions and to plot the entrances and exits of each section since, like Zed 2600, each section of a level is randomly placed in a set order for a different playing experience every play.  I bring that up to see if using those functions would work in this kind of setup you're suggesting.