How I learned to stop worrying and love the Tiles

Progress is being made in the world of XNA.  I spent a while figuring out the right way to load in the assets and properties mentioned before in a hierarchical format.

I've spent a lot of time gutting the sample platformer game of most of its' game-specific code.  I was going to toss out the whole system of 'tiles' for the background until I looked closer at how they worked.

At first I thought having such a large number of collidable objects would be a horrible drain on performance for anything larger than one screen, but then I realized that the grid was more than just a way to lay out levels, it was also a convenient way to sort things for collision detection, since we know where on the grid the relevant actors are.

I did, however, disconnect the collision and graphics elements of the grid.  As it stood, the collision type and texture were wired together.  I also added in a data-driven 'tile set' xml, which brings back memories of RPG Maker already.

I'm still going to support colliding actors who don't fit nicely into a series of cubes, but I'll be keeping this grid around for now to help lay the foundation for platforming adventure.

Today's screenshot still uses the sample assets, but it was screen-grabbed from my own XBox, so that's exciting.