New map

Now we will try to design a new map using Tiled. First you must have some tiles. Soon you will use your own fancy tiles or the awful ones which come packed with freeVikings, but now we will use the tiles I have prepared for this tutorial. Make a new directory somewhere. Then copy the image file with tiles to that directory. They are in the directory with examples for this chapter: freeVikings/docs/develop_guide/examples/CH1_FirstMap/simple_tiles.png

Go to Tiled and create a new map (menu File, item New, or Ctrl+N). A dialog will pop up, change the default values to those you can see on the image below. Currently freeVikings can only work with tiles of size 40x40 pixels (maybe one day I'll make it more flexible) and maps should have at least 16x12 tiles, because a smaller map doesn't fill the game window (and it's so small, that there will be no fun for the vikings I think).

It's the time to load the tiles. From menu Tileset choose item New tileset. If you want you can change the Tileset name, but it is of no importance. What is important is to tick the checkbox labelled "Reference tileset image" and then click on the Browse button and find the image with tiles.

In the bottom-left corner of Tiled window there is a really inconspicuous button (see the screenshot below). Press it.

The window which pops up is a "palette" of loaded tiles. If you have done everything how I told you to, it should look like this:

Click on one of the tiles, it automatically occurs on the button which causes the palette to pop up.

Everything is ready, we can make our first map. Choose one of the two tiles (they are awful, I know, I have never had a sense of art), choose the pencil tool from the toolbar on the left and start to design the map.

It could be useful for you to know that Tiled gives you a possibility of zooming (zoom buttons are also in the toolbar). You should always try the menu View, where you can switch on/off highlighting of cursor (not very useful), displaying the grid and coordinate numbers (sometimes useful).

So I have designed the map and saved it in the directory where I have the tileset image.

My (very simple) idea is that the vikings will start in the top left corner and they'll always go down, in every story some tough monster will be waiting to eat them. After they bash the last monster, they will get into the lift which will take them to the EXIT in the top right corner of the map. Now we have the map, in the future chapters we'll add monsters etc.

What I should have, but haven't told you:

or the vikings won't be able to pass through...