Blocking map tiles

levellass · Post by **levellass** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:31 pm

Perhaps this should be in Oracle requests, but I don't know.

It seems I have hit an unusual problem with my map; while *everyone* knows background tiles don't affect Keen, mine are; certain tiles always seem to block Keen, others let him through. For example, the purple mountains and tree tiles block Keen on the map and I can't stop them. I have three possibilities;

1.) There is an invisible blocking tile to be placed on the map to turn ordinary not-blocking map tiles blocking. (Why don't people tell you this stuff?)

2.) There is some way to make background tiles blocking.

3.) I've been stupid and missed something obvious.

Help, someone?

ckguy · Post by **ckguy** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 3:49 pm

I've never noticed this, weird ...

What did you do to notice this? Did you copy some of the tree background tiles elsewhere, and notice that they were blocking? Are you sure you were just copying stuff in plane 0 (the background plane) and not plane 1 (the foreground plane)?

levellass · Post by **levellass** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 5:50 am

I constructed a new map, using tiles I'd made myself, thinking that since all background tiles had no blocking properties, they'd be fine. When I played my map, I could walk on my ground, and not on some other tiles, some were sorta one wayish, et cetera; a real mess. It is possible that it is due to stuff in layer 1, but if it is, I can't see the blocks responsible.

Can anyone tell me say, what stops you walking over blocks in the map? Is there some way of hex-editing it to see what tile is used? It is ruining my map.

Kdash · Post by **Kdash** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:14 am

You could, technically, just copy those tiles onto a part of the tileset that doesn't interact with Keen. But, I think that'd just be a waste...

adurdin · Post by **adurdin** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:30 pm

levellass wrote:Can anyone tell me say, what stops you walking over blocks in the map? Is there some way of hex-editing it to see what tile is used? It is ruining my map.

I just realised what might be causing you trouble:

There are some sprites that can affect the ability to walk around the map. Particularly these are used for the different diagonal edges. You can see these quite clearly in Keen 5 on the omegamatic map (around the elevator at the top, for example).

Unfortunately, in most copies of Keen 4's egagraph there is no image for them, making them transparent. If you look at the 'sprite icons' part of the tileset between the backgrounds and the platforms, you'll see a blank row -- I think they go in there.

I believe (but you'll have to test this) that they are in the same order on that last row as they are in Keen 5; see the keen 5 tileset image for example (email me if you don't have Keen 5).

You'll have to edit this in the egagraph to add those icons, re-import it, and re-run tedsetup (on a clean copy of TED5 just in case). You should then be able to see these walls, if they're what's stopping you.

levellass · Post by **levellass** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:56 am

Actually, I filled in that blank row with tiles early on because I thought there were no tiles or sprites there; they do not show up on the icons, but show up in the tileset as usable tiles.

EDIT: Changing the sprites over a tile makes no difference, but changing the foreground tile over it does, this suggests an invisible blocking forground tile on the map, I will investigate.

EDIT 2:

There is not 1, but 18 different tiles used on the map that are invisible; the first 13 are different slopes and a solid blocking tile; the last is the miragia/door entry tile, and the other four are used when Keen goes from land to water; they have the special properties as follows:

$0B Keen goes down into water
$0C Keen goes left into water (Not used)
$0D Keen goes up into water
$0E Keen goes right into water

If you add the following image into your Keen graphics, you'll be able to see all of these tiles on the map and how they're used. It's quite a smart solution, I had actually started something like this myself. (And yes, they are used in levels elsewhere.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v499/ ... wtiles.png

Shadow Master · Post by **Shadow Master** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:35 pm

I always wondered what where those blank tiles used for. Glad somebody figured it out.

So, this mechanism is used only in the worldmap? How do the diagonal tiles in regular levels work?

levellass · Post by **levellass** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 1:48 am

They're just foreground tiles with the various diagonal properties. What the map tiles do is act exactly like normal level blocking tiles, but invisible, so that instead of having to put a lot of foreground tiles over your map, you just use those basic ones. It also allows for invisible secret passages and whatnot.