Reducing File Size
Continuing on from yesterday I created some new structs that could hold just the right data for the tilemaps.
I was surprised how tiny the tilemap file became.
There were some bugs in it, because I was doing some calculation wrong.
But even then the file shrank from 7MB to 180KB.
After fixing the bugs I got the right data, but it also shrank even further to a mere 93KB.
That’s a huge win and I wish I could reduce the memory footprint like that as well.
Though let’s first try to load the data back into the game.
However I can’t know if it worked if I don’t change anything first.
So I have to expand the editor a bit so I can place some tiles in the tilemap.
Shouldn’t be too hard since I already have a SetTileValue function.
UPDATE:
On my way back home I wanted to see if I could implement modifying a tilemap.
Turns out it was as easy as I said.
I already had the pointer to the tile.
So after adding some buttons to click and turning on some old code, I could modify the tiles.
I think nothing special has to happen when changing the ID of a tile at least.
And the ID determines what kind of tile it is.
I also resaved the tilemap to the file. Changing the file size from 96KB to 98KB (so it wasn’t 93KB like I said above). Which means the changes probably worked, as I scribbled some random tiles in empty spaces. The next step is to load the saved tilemap. Maybe I will do it this weekend, but I am already satisfied enough with what I achieved this week to be honest 🙂