Auto-tiling using “sub-tiles” in I Am Overburdened
I added auto-tiling to my pixel-art roguelike indie game “I Am Overburdened” with the latest update using the “sub-tile” approach (first gif).
It is super simple to implement and requires much less sprite work than
the classic “blob” (or 8-way) method.
The idea here is to split tiles which require special corner graphics
and check the relevant neighbors for each corner. To cover each
situation 4 variants are required so 16 sub-tiles. Based on the
horizontal, vertical and diagonal neighbors of a given corner the
appropriate sub-tile graphic can be selected and voila: Auto-tiling.
The second gif shows the end result within the game.
To me, the difference is night and day. It does make the grid structure
of the levels less readable (functionally may be a bit of a downgrade),
but it makes the dungeons feel much more claustrophobic so all in all, I
feel like it is a big win :)
Let me know what you think!
For the sake of completeness I made a picture showcasing the “blob” (last picture). It is the more flexible and well-established (classical) method and I
had a system coded like this long ago, but still, I went with a
different technique because of the amount of graphical work required for
all the maps…
Here you create special tile graphics with the required corners for all
the relevant neighbor combinations (47 exist, the first part of the
image). Each neighbor is represented by a bit (power of 2 value, the
second part of the image) and by combining the flags of the “important”
matching neighbors you get a unique value identifying the required tile.
Hope this is helpful to other devs :)
Cheers!