Simple Platform

This will show you how to create a platform game using a tiled map, and tile based collision detection.

Create Map

Tiled

You will firstly need to install the Tiled program from the website and link below. In college the Tiled executeables are on moodle, under project, technical skill, monogame, and tiled. I have also added links to other tutorials for using Tiled.

Tiled Website and Download

Tiled Map Editor

Tutorials for using Tiled

Offical Tiled Tutorials

Tiled Basics

Tiled Youtube Playlist Series

Written Version of Above Tutorials

New Tiled Map

You will need a new tiled map, the tile size in the screen shot is 128 pixels, in the end i actually changed this to 32 x 32 and resized the tiles accordingly:

It is important to change the format of the map to Base64 gzip compressed:

Add Tile Set

Now your map is created we need to add a tile set:

In creating this tutorial i first tried a tileset based upon a collection of images, this seemed fine in Tiled but failed to draw using Square.Tiled. So make sure you choose embed and based on tileset image:

Draw Your Level

Now you have a tile set build a simple set of platforms. You should rename the layer to something like Tiles:

Add Player Object

Now you have a section of platforms, we can now set the position of the player. This will also be the object moved by the code and player input. So insert an object layer, and then use the rectangle tool to create the object:

MonoGame Project

Create a new MonoGame project, mine is a Windows project.

Setup Square.Tiled

If you have a project ready, create a new class in your project. Click project and new class and call it Tiled.cs, then copy the code from this document over the code in your new class: Square.Tiled Class

Remember to set the name space to Squared.Tiled.

You will need to add references in the using section for the following:

using System.IO;
using Squared.Tiled;

Code to Display Map

Map Variables

At the top of your Game1 class add these additional variables:

Map map;
Layer collision;
Vector2 viewportPosition;
int tilepixel;

LoadContent for map

In the LoadContent method add the following lines to load the map, the collision layer and to set the texture of the player. The variable tilepixel assumes your tiles are square, the number of pixels is taken from the map:

map = Map.Load(Path.Combine(Content.RootDirectory, "SimplePlatform.tmx"), Content);
collision = map.Layers["Tiles"];
tilepixel = map.TileWidth;
map.ObjectGroups["objects"].Objects["Player"].Texture = Content.Load<Texture2D>("hero");

The Update Method

You will also need to update the viewportPosition, this will center the map onto the player:

viewportPosition= new Vector2(map.ObjectGroups["objects"].Objects["Player"].X - (graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth/2), map.ObjectGroups["objects"].Objects["Player"].Y - (graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight/2));

The Draw Method

Add the following to the draw method to draw the map and hero to the screen.

If you already have spriteBatch.Begin() or spriteBatch.End() then just place the middle line inbetween your lines.

spriteBatch.Begin();
map.Draw(spriteBatch, new Rectangle(0, 0, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height), viewportPosition);
spriteBatch.End();

At this point your project should run an display your map centered onto the player.