Tile Map Support

In 2D games the environment is quite often rendered a series of images arranged in a grid formation - this is referred to as a Tile Map. Each image is called a tile, the tile map being the laying down of a collection tiles (sometimes repeating single tiles) to form the environment. Tile Maps can be of arbitrary size and may have multiple layers of tiles. For instance, in may make sense in a top down game to have a layer of tiles for the floor, a layer of tiles for the walls and a layer for the ceiling. This allows you to render the appropriate parts of the map at the appropriate times.

In Slick there is no generic tile map support, since it's essentially drawing a set of images to form a grid. However, where appropriate tools exist Slick provides loaders and renderer for their tile map format. At the current time there is a single tile map tool supported named TileD. This editor provides good support for layers, variable size tiles and maps. It's also very easy and productive to use. See TileD Import and Usage for more details.