Tilemaps

In the Room Editor and the Screen Editor you can use Tiles to draw what is referred to in Kwyll as a Tilemap. This is an efficient way to draw lots of graphics in Kwyll. For Rooms Types, this is typically used to draw the background of your game. The Screen tilemap is often used to create a surround for your game window, something in which to place the instruments.

Both the Room and Screen tilemaps store a tile type and colour information for each grid cell in the tile map. The grid size is defined by the Window game setting for Room Types, and is the entire size of the screen for Screens. It should be noted however, that in a Screen that is defined as a Game Screen, and shows the game window, it is not possible to draw tiles in the area occupied by the game screen, they will be overridden by the game display.

Tilemap Collision Data

Room Types also have an additional feature stored in their tilemaps that is specific to gameplay and not appropriate for Screens, collision data. This stores information about how objects can or cannot pass through a particular grid cell. It's possible to define each grid cell to allow or prevent movement through it in all 4 directions independently. For example, a grid cell can be configured to allow an object to pass through safely when travelling up the screen, but to prevent it passing through when travelling down the screen, something often used in platformer games for the platforms.