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Chapter 4 Perspective, Scene Design, and Basic Animation
Tile-Based Games
Tile-based video games that use a grid map, like checkers, would also
work well for blitting and double buffering. Only the tiles that contain a moved
checker or the tile where the checker was would need to be redrawn for each
turn. Tile-based games can be very complex and use standard sized tiles to
represent a portion of the game map, actor, or asset.
Tile-based games use standard-size tile images to make a composite
game map and other objects within the game. To save computer memory, the
computer only draws in the tiles that are composited as the display image that
the player sees. The other tiles are stored in the back buffer so they can be
quickly drawn into the next frame to be displayed.
Traditional tile based games, like Scrabble, use a square tile that is placed
on a grid game board. Tile-based video games work the same way by adding
square tiles to create a composite image of the game map. Characters, vehicles,
game pieces, and more are drawn as tiles on a layer above the game map to
move with the action of the game, as shown in Figure 4-16.
The video games SimCity and Civilization are examples of tile-based games.
If you use the map editor functions of these games, the tile-based aspect is
clear. Civilization 5 introduced hexagonal tiles to that series of video games.
Previously, the Civilization games had rectangular tiles.
Figure 4-16.
iralu/Shutterstock.com
A tile-based video game uses standard-size images, such as those
shown here, for the characters and objects within the game. The
chroma green marks areas of transparency.