TileMap

TileMaps can be useful tools to build levels for platformers or top down games.

Excalibur supports building tile based games, often referred to as "TileMaps." Excalibur has a Tiled plugin to support the popular Tiled editor map files.

Tilemap

Tilemaps consist of a uniform grid of cells that can be solid or not. Each cell can have it's own graphics.

Tile maps are made up of Tiles which can draw Graphics. Tile maps support multiple layers of Graphics and work well for building tile-based games such as RPGs, adventure games, strategy games, and others. Tiles can be solid so that Actors can't pass through them.

typescript
// Load your favorite tileset (maybe from Kenney.nl)
const kenneyRougeLikePack = new ex.ImageSource(rougeLikeImageSrc);
// Create a sprite sheet
const rougeLikeSpriteSheet = ex.SpriteSheet.fromImageSource({
    image: kenneyRougeLikePack,
    grid: {
        rows: 31,
        columns: 51,
        spriteHeight: 16,
        spriteWidth: 16
    },
    spacing: {
        margin: {
            x: 1,
            y: 1
        }
    }
});
// Create a tilemap
const tilemap = new ex.TileMap({
    rows: 10,
    columns: 10,
    tileWidth: 16,
    tileHeight: 16,
});
// loop through tilemap cells
for (let tile of tilemap.tiles) {
    const sprite = rougeLikeSpriteSheet.getSprite(0, 0);
    if (sprite) {
        tile.addGraphic(sprite);
    }
}

typescript
// Load your favorite tileset (maybe from Kenney.nl)
const kenneyRougeLikePack = new ex.ImageSource(rougeLikeImageSrc);
// Create a sprite sheet
const rougeLikeSpriteSheet = ex.SpriteSheet.fromImageSource({
    image: kenneyRougeLikePack,
    grid: {
        rows: 31,
        columns: 51,
        spriteHeight: 16,
        spriteWidth: 16
    },
    spacing: {
        margin: {
            x: 1,
            y: 1
        }
    }
});
// Create a tilemap
const tilemap = new ex.TileMap({
    rows: 10,
    columns: 10,
    tileWidth: 16,
    tileHeight: 16,
});
// loop through tilemap cells
for (let tile of tilemap.tiles) {
    const sprite = rougeLikeSpriteSheet.getSprite(0, 0);
    if (sprite) {
        tile.addGraphic(sprite);
    }
}

Tiled plugin

Excalibur has a Tiled map plugin https://github.com/excaliburjs/excalibur-tiled/ for loading .tmx maps.

We recommend using the Tiled map editor to build your maps and export them to JSON. You can then load them using a Generic Resource and process them to create your levels. A TileMap can then be used as part of a level or map class that adds enemies and builds game objects from the Tiled map.

Read more here!

typescript
import * as ex from 'excalibur'
import * as tiled from '@excaliburjs/plugin-tiled';
import exampleCityUrl from './example-city.tmx';
const game = new ex.Engine({
    width: 600,
    height: 400,
    displayMode: ex.DisplayMode.FitScreen
});
const tiledMapResource = new tiled.TiledResource(exampleCityUrl);
const loader = new ex.Loader([tiledMapResource])
game.start(loader).then(() => {
    tiledMapResource.addToScene(game.currentScene);
    game.currentScene.camera.zoom = 2;
});

typescript
import * as ex from 'excalibur'
import * as tiled from '@excaliburjs/plugin-tiled';
import exampleCityUrl from './example-city.tmx';
const game = new ex.Engine({
    width: 600,
    height: 400,
    displayMode: ex.DisplayMode.FitScreen
});
const tiledMapResource = new tiled.TiledResource(exampleCityUrl);
const loader = new ex.Loader([tiledMapResource])
game.start(loader).then(() => {
    tiledMapResource.addToScene(game.currentScene);
    game.currentScene.camera.zoom = 2;
});

Currently unsupported

Hexagonal and Staggered TileMaps are not yet supported out of the box (but they are in our plans).

We recommend reading some of the material on Red Blob Games for algorithms around Hexagonal.