Hi All
I am involved in creating 2D top down games for mobile devices (cellphones). As such, I'm looking for a good tile based world/terrain/dungeon creator software package. I have looked at Dundjinni and it looks OK but the resulting maps do not really enforce a tile grid. These maps are probably very useful for printing nice looking worlds but not as useful for putting together a world that will exist only in my cellphone game as a collection of tiles. I think Goldsmith is a little better in this regard but it too is more oriented toward printing maps than toward making software game worlds. I have also tried Mappy, which is much better for what I want but it doesn't have much in the way of prepackaged tilesets.

So does anyone out there know of a good program that would do what I want?


Thanks

Hm I made a mapeditor a while back. I don't know if it would be very usefull to you seeing as the maps are a set size and it mainly focuses on plotting the tiles onscreen.
I think what your looking for is non-existant sorry to say. If you find anything feel free to email me.

I don't really have any good projects for the time being so maybe I'll think about making something like that. I have been heading in that direction anyhow.
You also said that you dont' have any good graphics that come pre-packaged with the program and it's hard to find some good graphics. Maybe I'll try setting up a team of people to work with me and it can become a project to benefit the public and the community. I'll post a new thread on the help wanted/offered section to see if anyone would be up to it.

check out Level Creator - http://www.swarming.net/levelcreator/downloads.php

Level Creator is very old and it works in Mac OS 9 only.

How about Tiled. It's only beta, but it is under active development. It's a Java app and should be suitable for simple maps.

Peter

Screenshot:

Also for graphics, check out some of these
Gaming World Resources
However I'm not sure if these are orginal or rips from games, therefore you should check their legal status before you sell a game with them in. In any case you can lay out your maps with these and redraw the tileset for the proper launch!

Pete

Just remembered... You can get the Torque 2D engine. $100. I think it has a level editor...

some time ago. It enables you to draw maps of any size with tiles of any size and up to three layers, saves them as text-files so they can be imported in any app. Runs on 9 and X, written in METAL. I can make it Opensource if anyone interested.

I'd also like to know how to get started with making games for cellphones. Can you please post some details? Thanks.

Reptile (free)

Yeah, I was gonna say reptile, but it looks like PowerMacX beat me too it :O

Max Wrote:Just remembered... You can get the Torque 2D engine. $100. I think it has a level editor...

Torque is a 3D engine, and it surely doesn't do tile based games.

igame3d Wrote:Torque is a 3D engine, and it surely doesn't do tile based games.

hmmm?

kemalyun Wrote:some time ago. It enables you to draw maps of any size with tiles of any size and up to three layers, saves them as text-files so they can be imported in any app. Runs on 9 and X, written in METAL. I can make it Opensource if anyone interested.

I'd also like to know how to get started with making games for cellphones. Can you please post some details? Thanks.

I would be interested in seeing this, if as you say it saves as pure text. Feel free to contact me.

I am also wondering if there are online articles with file format dissection of one of the more common isometric Starcraft-like map formats.