How to store tile data for placing tiles

Question

I'm making a game similar to the game Terraria and ran into an issue on how to store the data of tile types. Each tile has an integer called tileType and this dictates all the other attributes of the tile like hardness, texture, etc. The tile itself is not a gameobject but instead a class in an array called Tiles located in each chunk (the chunks are the gameobjects). My issue is storing all the data of the tile types and have resorted to doing a switch statement for every possible tile type but this feels extremely slow because I plan of making tiles destructible. Is there any way to store the tile type data in a more efficient way?

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Alanisaac · May 22, 2018 at 01:29 AM

Often times when you want to model storing data in an object-oriented program, a good path to take is making a class! I'd recommend making a TileType class that has all the data about a tile type. You can reference this type from your tile object to populate various properties. If you structure things this way, you can also load all your tile types from a file. Here's a really simple example, where the data would come from a json file. For more on how to read JSON, see this article:

Code Files

 [Serializable]
 public class TileType
 {
     public int id;
     public string name;
     public double hardness;
 
     public static TileType CreateFromJSON(string jsonString)
     {
         return JsonUtility.FromJson<TileType>(jsonString);
     }
 }
 
 public class TileTypeLoader
 {
     public IEnumerable<TileType> LoadTileTypes()
     {
         var tileTypes = new List<TileType>();
         var tileTypeStrings = File.ReadAllLines("C:/path/to/tile/type/file.json");
         foreach(var tileTypeString in tileTypeStrings)
         {
             var tileType = TileType.CreateFromJSON(tileTypeString);
             tileTypes.Add(tileType);
         }
 
         return tileTypes;
     }
 }

A JSON File

 {"id": 1, "name": "Dirt", "hardness": 1}
 {"id": 2, "name": "Stone", "hardness": 2.5}
 {"id": 3, "name": "Grass", "hardness": 1.5}

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Starleg2 · May 22, 2018 at 02:27 AM 0

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Thanks for the support, I do use C# so if you have a C# example that would be nice but I understand the concept. Thanks again for the answer that fits perfectly

Captain_Pineapple Starleg2 · May 22, 2018 at 07:29 AM 0

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The given code is in C#. JSON is only the name of this specific way to format data but has nothing to do with the programming language.

Starleg2 Captain_Pineapple · May 22, 2018 at 03:21 PM 0

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Oops, my mistake. Thanks again

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Starleg2 · May 22, 2018 at 06:23 PM 0

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I have worked with the script and have found it very useful but I still don't understand how to get the TileType List out of the IEnumerable. On line 26 where does it return the list to? @Alanisaac

Alanisaac Starleg2 · May 22, 2018 at 07:12 PM 0

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It depends on how your code is structured. But let's say you have some sort of TileManager class that controls the creation of tiles. In that class, you could load the tile types in the Awake call like so:

 public class TileManager : MonoBehaviour
 {
     private List<TileType> tileTypes;
 
     void Awake() 
     {
         var tileLoader = new TileLoader();
         var tiles = tileLoader.LoadTiles();
         tileTypes = tiles.ToList();
     }
 }

Starleg2 Alanisaac · May 23, 2018 at 01:43 PM 0

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Thanks you, that fixed it

Answer 2

Answer by allencoded · Jun 03, 2018 at 06:01 PM

I created a tutorial on medium, which basically is close the answer posted here.

https://medium.com/@allencoded/unity-tilemaps-and-storing-individual-tile-data-8b95d87e9f32

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Starleg2 · Jun 04, 2018 at 02:15 AM 0

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Thanks for the feedback, this helps as well!

varikor · Mar 31, 2019 at 07:20 PM 0

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Thanks so much! I am just wondering how to access the bool IsExplored in your script?

How to store tile data for placing tiles

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