Million Tile Engine Beta Release

Million Tile Engine
#21

Thanks Danny!

@nick_sherman: If you’re talking about distribution, I’m going to store customer emails in a mailing list and send updated files en masse. I’ll probably have updated files for you guys every two weeks or so, sooner if a serious bug needs fixing, at least until v1.0. After that updates will slow down as I work on larger requested features and the like.

I’m given to understand that Sellbox is working on a more convenient mechanism for handling updates and I’ve emailed them to see when that option might be available.

If there’s a better place than Sellbox to handle transactions/updates, I’ll gladly check it out! 

#22

This looks fantastic.  Looking forward to buying your library upon completion of my next game.

#23

Having been testing this engine for awhile I can confidently say MTE fulfills the promise that Lime sold me on so many months ago.

  1. It’s stable. (There’s a handy debug function you can run to keep an eye on framerate or memory usage)
  2. Performance is great. Very solid on all the iOS platforms I tested on. (3GS, 4, iPad2/3). 3GS obviously isn’t 60fps but it’s still quite playable.
  3. There’s a full-featured set of helper functions , and as you can see there are docs ready to go.
  4. There’s support. (Not a free license to write your code for you, but the author is here!)

The only feature that I can think of as “missing” in comparison is support for encoded Tiled formats, but considering how many times smaller a single JSON is compared to a tileset, my guess is that it won’t be missed. (And maybe it gets added later - that’s up to user feedback!)

#24

I understand the paradox of needing to buy a product in order to know whether you need the product in order to decide whether to buy the product! I’ve tried to be as descriptive and informative as possible in my documentation and sample videos. In time more videos and examples will follow.

The current demo demonstrates map loading and RPG style movement, collision handling, and Tiled object detection. That is to say the example resembles 8-bit and 16-bit console RPG’s in which the hero is fixed to a grid. Zelda-type free movement and the per-pixel movement of platformers is supported, but I don’t yet have sample projects available to demonstrate them. 

Given the need, I think I will look into creating a platforming example in the two weeks following the release of the upcoming update. 

Speaking of the update, Scale-independent parallax is now where it needs to be. A lot has changed under the hood, so I’ll be taking the first few days of next week to test and debug the engine before releasing the new file.

#25

It will take me a few weeks to get up to speed, so hopefully you will have that demo done just in time for me to purchase.  I’m looking forward to making my game, and it looks like this would definitely be the missing tool I need.

#26

Looks cool. Any plans for isometric tile support?

#27

Good morning everyone,

I haven’t received any complaints or bug reports yet. On the immediate agenda then is rectangular tile support and, time permitting, independent x and y scaling and scale-independent parallax controlled by properties.

@samwit; between “features I plan to add” and “features I’d like to add,” isometric tile support is definitely in the latter group at the moment. I will look into it though! I always thought isometric maps were cool.

#28

How does this run on Android?

This seems very cool and exactly what I was looking for.

#29

I was wondering the same thing as cary, this seems to be exactly what I need but there is no mention on anything related to android. How is the performance on android systems and does it even support them?

#30

Yes, most definitely, the Million Tile Engine will run on any device supported by Corona. After I saw your Android questions I tested it on both the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Amazon Kindle Fire (original non-HD). The Kindle had some strange “lag spike” issues, for lack of a better word. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 ran CastleDemo about as well as the iPhone 3GS. CastleDemo was designed to make use of the iPad2’s much greater performance, so it is not a best-case scenario for these devices. I will make a point of coding the new platformer/sidescroller sample project to run nice and smoothly on these older Android devices to better demonstrate engine performance.

If any current buyers have tried the engine on more modern Android devices I would love to hear your impressions!

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I21gyyIWtSQ[/media]

#31

Thanks, I will purchase it later today. I will be using a Galaxy S3 as the testing device and will let everyone know how it does :smiley:

#32

I look forward to hearing how well the Galaxy S3 performs! That seems to be the poster child for Android superphones these days. Well, aside from the new S4 anyway. If I could afford to have multiple high-end phones the S3/4 would be one of them. As it is I’m looking into buying a newer tablet like the Nexus 7 or its successor when available. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 was a great tablet in 2011, but it has always lagged far behind the iPad in terms of general Corona performance.

#33

Rectangular tiles and independent X/Y scaling are finished. Next week I’ll be looking at scale-independent parallax the first few days and then testing the engine the next few days with a new file available for you all by the end of the week!

#34

What actually would be a nice idea for you dude, is to kinda polish the engine or interface up more ( if needed, I havnt bought it yet so im not sure :stuck_out_tongue: ) Then get a kickstarter project going for funding to get more testing devices.

#35

Thanks for the advice, but MTE is a library, so it has no interface of it’s own :stuck_out_tongue:  As for testing devices, the bigger concern is keeping the engine running smoothly on low-end devices. Luckily Corona is pretty good about keeping the API’s MTE uses compatible across the various supported platforms. The more I build onto MTE, the more eager I am to actually use it to make games myself! When I finally get enough free time to start my own projects again I may try funding them through Indiegogo. Kickstarter always struck me as something for larger projects, like Android game consoles or Imperial Death Stars. 

A few updates and notes:

I’ve finished debugging the MTE update and the new file will go out to everyone tomorrow along with patch notes and updated documentation. Current buyers should keep an eye out for an email from the address: my username at hotmail.com. I know, two weeks became three, but it can be hard to judge just how long a new feature might take to implement. 

I’ve received a whole bunch of questions about MTE over the past few weeks! I’ll be updating the FAQ to answer the common ones.

Over the next three weeks I’ll be working on a platforming/sidescroller sample project.

I’ve uploaded a short video to demonstrate just what I mean by “Culling.” MTE’s zoom function will expose the border regions of the display grid if you zoom out far enough. Here you can see the rows/columns of tiles being deleted and added as the camera moves through the map. No matter how large the map is, the device only has to manage this small number of display objects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLuLROF6TY

#36

Are their working demos and more documentation with purchasing a license?  I’m new and find it easier to see something working in action then try to build something from scratch at this point.

#37

At the moment the download includes the engine, the documentation available above, the CastleDemo sample project (see the first and last sample videos above), and the original .tmx file for editting CastleDemo’s map in Tiled. The whole CastleDemo project folder is included, so testing the engine is as simple as opening the folder in the Corona Simulator! All the documentation that currently exists is available in the first post of the thread.

I’ll be adding more documentation and additional sample projects in the coming weeks. The next sample project will be a sidescrolling platformer. 

Dev log:

Scale-independent parallax is coming along nicely and should be finished by the end of the week. Testing and debugging will take another few days after that.

#38

The side scrolling platform is what I need.  I’m in the process of making that type of game and so far I have been making all the levels by hand, in an almost endless scroller fashion.

Is there an ETA on that sample?

How does purchasing this in Beta carry over to future updates?

#39

I have no firm ETA for the sidescroller sample at the moment, I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Buying the Beta gives you access to all updates up to and including the final release, at the least. I haven’t received any bug reports yet, so I’ll be charging ahead with new features, documentation, and samples between now and then.

#40

I guess it depends on what exactly you need from the sample. I mean, the engine works great, *right now*. You can pump out a level in Tiled and have it onscreen in very short order. If you need someone to provide you code to build a sidescrolling game mechanic that’s one thing, but if you just need a fast way to build levels and have code functions to help you connect it to your existing codebase, I think the current package has that pretty well covered.