Arena (Map, TileSet and EntitySet system)

HoverEX calls a game environment Arena. Arena consist of three essential dynamic data that can differ from game to game. They are:

Map
TileSet
EntitySet

To make things simple for Arena building, HoverEX has a specially written editor just for that.

More info of the editor can be found here.

Understanding Arena

How HoverEX seperates it’s data is pretty straight forward.

Map — Defines how the world looks and also stores the wall collision data.
TileSet — Defines the images of each tiles of both floor and wall.
EntitySet — Defines the object blueprints of the Arena.

Being so, a map file would consist of these three parts. At the sound of this, it might seemed that we are duplicating alot of data as TileSet and EntitySet are stored in a map. This makes it such that every map that uses the same TileSet and EntitySet actually do not share anything at all. In the first glance, this does not seemed like a good idea. Hoever, this design was decided because of the version uncertainty and conflict that could happen in sharing TileSet and EntitySet.

However, when building a map, we need a TileSet and EntitySet independently. Hence, we have deviced the TileSet and EntitySet to beable to be stored seperately from the map. This however is strictly for map creation only and changing them does not affect any game play at all.

The Arena Data Structure

This section discussed about how the internal datastructure of HoverEX Arena works.

Bellow holds the current state of the Arena classes. Arena was designed to be splitted into

Server (HX_Arena)
Client (HX_ClientArena)
Editor (HX_EditorArena)

The order of the classes are placed respectively to how they inherit each other.

HX_EditorArena ← HX_ClientArena ← HX_Arena

HX_Arena
bsp_manager	BSP Engine to deal with optimized wall lines
object_list	List of objects(puck and crafts)
projectile_list	List of projectiles
config	The XML config file that describes the arena
team_list[4]	The team list

HX_ClientArena
map	Defines the grid map of the arena
tileset	Defines the tileset(graphics) of the arena
renderer	The rendering engine to render the arena

HX_EditorArena is like HX_ClientArena but with an additional ability to edit the Arena.

File structure

Map(arena) file is a zip file consisting of the following files:

map_name.arena
Filename	File Description
`config.xml`	arena configurations
`tumbnail.png`	the tumbnail shown when map is selected
`map/grid.dat`	the tile based map data
`map/bsp.dat`	bsp optimized wall lines for collision detection
`tileset/floor.[png,tga,jpg]`	floor image file
`tileset/wall.[png,tga,jpg]`	wall image file
`tileset/wall_lines.dat`	line description for walls of each tile
`entityset/object/craft[1-4].[png,tga]`	the craft’s image for each team
`entityset/object/craft-shadow[1-4].[png,tga]`	the craft’s shadow image for each team
`entityset/object/puck.[png,tga]`	the puck’s image
`entityset/object/puck-shadow.[png,tga]`	the puck’s shadow image
`entityset/turret/[1-4].[png,tga]`*	the craft’s turret images for each team
`entityset/projectile/.[png,tga]`*	the projectile images
`entityset/item/.[png,tga]`*	the retrievable item images

NOTE: Files in Italic is optional. You can practically define your own structure. The listed ones are just a suggestion.
But the entityset dir MUST be present and all entityset graphics should go inside.

Config file

This section describes the config file of Arena. To keep things simple and backward compatible, we have a config file using XML format for both the Map and the TileSet.

<hoverex ver="2.0">
  <arena name="arena_name" desc="arena_desc" author="arena_author" map-width="map_width" map-height="map_height">
    <spawn-point type="puck" x="x_pos" y="y_pos"/>
    <spawn-point type="team" for="team_id" x="x_pos" y="y_pos" facing-angle="direction" />
    <spawn-point type="items" x="x_pos" y="y_pos" spawn-interval="milli_sec" style="[random, sequence, pingpong]">
      <item use="item_id1" />
      <item use="item_id2" />
      <item use="item_id3" />
    </spawn-point>
  </arena>
 
  <tileset
    name="tileset_name"
    desc="tileset_desc"
    author="tileset_author"
    floor-image="tileset_floor_file_name"
    wall-image="tileset_wall_file_name"
  />
 
  <entityset name="entity_name" desc="entity_desc" author="entity_author">
    <physics air-density="air_density_value" gravity="gravity" />
 
    <puck
      image="puck_image_file_name"
      shadow-image="puck_shadow_image_file_name"
      radius="radius" mass="mass"
      friction="friction_coefficient"
      drag="drag_coefficient" />
    <craft radius="radius" mass="mass" thrust="thrust" friction="friction_coefficient" drag="drag_coefficient" />
 
    <turret name="turret name" id="turret_id" image="turret_image">
      <gun use="projectile_id" limit="{0 = infinite}" power-drain="{0 is not allowed}" interval="milli_sec">
        <barrel dx="offset_x" dy="offset_y" direction="direction" />
        <barrel dx="offset_x" dy="offset_y" direction="direction" />
        <barrel dx="offset_x" dy="offset_y" direction="direction" />
      </gun>
      <gun use="projectile_id" limit="{0 = infinite}" power-drain="{0 is not allowed}" interval="milli_sec">
        <barrel dx="offset_x" dy="offset_y" direction="direction" />
      </gun>
    </turret>
 
    <team id="team1"
     name="team1 name" color="#rrggbb"
     craft-image="craft_image_file_name"
     craft-shadow-image="craft_shadow_image_file_name" />
    <team id="team2" name="team2 name" color="#rrggbb"
     craft-image="craft_image_file_name"
     craft-shadow-image="craft_shadow_image_file_name" />
    <team id="team3" name="team3 name" color="#rrggbb"
     craft-image="craft_image_file_name"
     craft-shadow-image="craft_shadow_image_file_name" />
    <team id="team4" name="team4 name" color="#rrggbb"
     craft-image="craft_image_file_name"
     craft-shadow-image="craft_shadow_image_file_name" />
 
    <projectile
      name="projectile name"
      id="projectile_id"
      image="image_file"
      life="milli_sec"
      radius="radius"
      mass="mass"
      velocity="velocity"
      explosion-force="explosion-force"
    />
  </entityset>
</hoverex>