JWM VS tiled

sigh

Yeah. I am very bullish on Kotlin. Think it's probably the most exciting language evolving right now.

I went on a few-tweet minirant here about why:

https://twitter.com/GavinRayDev/status/1443279425311805440

But the tl;dr is that:

- There is Jetpack Compose currently, for Desktop, Web, and Android

- And Kotlin Native putting a large portion of resources into Skia bindings (JetBrains calls the lib "Skiko" for Kotlin Native https://github.com/JetBrains/skiko and "Skija")

It's very clear (and there are some employees which have confirmed this IIRC) that they are working on "Jetpack Compose Everywhere" that runs on iOS as well, from a single codebase.

There's the big Kotlin event going on right now, where they just announced the new WASM backend and changes in their compiler + IR commonizing/restructuring ("K2").

- https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2021/10/the-road-to-the-k2...

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pqz9sKXatw

The net result is that you wind up with a single language that you can use to write your backend API, your UI code (Jetpack Compose app deployed across Web/Android/iOS/Mac/Win/Linux, or transpile to JS/TS if you just want a web app, etc) and with Kotlin Native even your native, low-level code to integrate with existing C/C++ etc ecosystem.

KN already does automatic bindgen for C and Swift headers, they have direct C++ interop (like Swift does) on their future roadmap as a potential "todo".

All of this is mostly possible already -- I can do the same thing using IE Java, GraalVM, and a transpiler like Google's j2cl or bck2brwser (which is what Gluon uses for JavaFX on the web). Including the "native" part.

IE, here's a contribution I made to get GraalVM producing native binaries using Skia from the JVM + JNI Jetbrains Skia library:

https://github.com/HumbleUI/JWM/issues/158

But Kotlin is pushing the hardest to make this whole platform/stack from native <-> desktop <-> mobile <-> browser a seamless, unified experience. And you can feel it, when you try to do the "whole stack, every platform, one language" thing.

Sorry for the rant and wall of text!

When you decide on the high-level design of the resume, start building your map in Tiled. You can customise the map from the basic game you already have or build your one from scratch - just try and see what works best for you.

A more sophisticated approach may be to use something like Tiled (https://www.mapeditor.org), but it typically takes a lot of code to to parse a Tiled map, so I wouldn’t start there. The exact needs of your game will dictate the approaches you use. Starting simple means you can make good, visible progress getting your game to work. And I’m sure that plenty of real games have shipped where the levels are just text files.

When I first messed with Phaser, I just used a 2D array to plop in my tiles, but that was very tedious. That's when I discovered the Tiled map editor! I was able to "paint" with my tilemap to create a map with various layers. I made a ground layer, a wall layer, an enemy layer, and a potion layer.

There is also Tiled from https://www.mapeditor.org/ as a tilemap editor.

and for the map creation side there is plenty of software ! this one is nice and open source and free etc etc : https://www.mapeditor.org/

PolishedMap, for use in-game. But, if you're just sketching stuff out, PolishedMap doesn't have the most convenient UI, so something quick with great features like Tiled works well

I use Tiled with this tileset I found in Pilot NET. The maps it creates are entirely form over function - no fancy art or effects unless you add them a different way - but they're very legible. Then I use Foundry's drawing tools to sketch out outlines for cover, object sizes, etc. (Here's an example of a map I made for a Train Heist combat - orange is Size 1, yellow is soft cover, purple is difficult terrain, and so on.)

If you want to add grids or hexes, you’ll need to edit the image in an image editor to add those. I’d suggest looking at TileD at https://www.mapeditor.org or something along those lines.