Corona Tiled

Library for connecting Solar2D Game Engine (previously known as Corona SDK) with Tiled Map Editor

Features

• Extendable selector for objects defined in tilemap (lua export format)
• Mapping from Tiled tileset to Corona image sheet (only tilesets - not single images - are currently supported)
• Tiled "polyline" conversion to Corona polygon or physics body shape

Characteristics

• Nothing happens under the hood. Each element has to be retrieved (using selector) and used the way developer wants.
• Strict layer separation. Corona code doesn't touch Tiled map structure, but takes all needed informations from proxy objects.
• No programming in Tiled - only level design and object positioning (lua language is better suited for programming than Tiled)

Repository structure

• The whole repo is Solar2D Game Engine project
• Library code resides in tiled directory (it can be included in other project by copying or creating symlink)
• Code snippets can be found in main.lua (it is also very simple test suite which is executed after corona simulator starts)
• corona.lua module contains helper methods which usually can do common operations on selector results

Currently supported object types

• image (rectangle with image) -> Object
• tileset -> table of Tile
• rectangle -> Rectangle
• polyline -> Shape

Object custom properties

• id (string)
• class (string values separated by space)
• offsetX (applies only for Shape and is used for adjusting shape position to match exactly i.e. some image physics body)
• offsetY (the same as above, but for Y axis)

Examples

• create selector

local exportedTable = require "exported"
local tiledSelector = require "tiled.selector"
local selector = tiledSelector.create(exportedTable)

Tilemap has to be exported to exported.lua file and placed in project directory.

• get object by id

local proxyObject = selector.getObjectById("some-unique-id")

You have to set custom property id with (string) value some-unique-id in Tiled map editor object property inspector.

• display object above

local image = corona.newImage(proxyObject)

This helper method takes object found by selector as an argument and returns regular Corona SDK DisplayObject

• add polygonal shape physics body to image

local corona = require "tiled.corona"

local object = selector.getObjectById('some-unique-id')
local shape = selector.getObjectById('shape-for-my-object')
local params = {shape=shape.points, density=3.0, friction=0.5, bounce=0.3}
local image = corona.newImage(object)
physics.addBody(image, params)

• extend selector with method

local index = require "tiled.index"
local adapter = require "tiled.adapter"
local physics = require "physics"

selector.addAdapter(adapter.Object(
    index.One2Many("byGid", "tileGid")
  ), function(index)
    return {
      findObjectsByTileGid = function(gid)
        return index.byGid[gid]
      end
    }
  end
)

This adds method findObjectsByTileGid to selector. Object must contain tileGid attribute to be indexed (and found) by method.

• for more examples see main.lua module

Contact

rzeszut.michal@gmail.com