Tiled maps
==========

The cocos.tiles module provides a simple method of managing tiled displays
in 2D games.

Tile maps are made of three components:

images
   Images are from individual files for from image atlases in a single file.
tiles
   Tiles may be stand-alone or part of a TileSet.
maps
   MapLayers are made of either rectangular or hexagonal Cells which
   reference the tiles used to draw the cell.

cocos.tiles supports two file formats:

1. The TMX file format as generated by the Tiled map editor from
   <http://mapeditor.org>
2. An internal cocos2d XML format that it can both read and write described
   below in `The XML File Specification`_

Both file formats are loaded with the same API call::

    #This loads a TMX format map
    cocos.tiles.load('filename.tmx')

    #This loads a cocos2d XML format map
    cocos.tiles.load('filename.xml')

Once the map is loaded the API for accessing the map information is the same
regardless of the on-disk format.

Fairly simple examples of using the cocos.tiles module is provided in
test/test_tiles.py, test/test_tmx.py, test_platformer.py

A basic tile map editor is provided in tools/editor.py


Maps
----

The RectMapLayer class extends the regular Cocos layer to handle a
regular grid of tile images, or Cells. The map layer may be manipulated
like any other Cocos layer. It also provides methods for interrogating
the map contents to find cells (eg. under the mouse) or neighboring
cells (up, down, left, right.)

Maps may be defined in Python code, but it is a little easier to do so
in XML. To support map editing the maps support round-tripping to XML.


The XML File Specification
--------------------------

The intent is that you may have a tile set defined in one XML file
which is shared amongst many map files (or indeed within a single
XML file). Images may be shared amongst multiple tiles with the tiles
adding different meta-data in each case.

These may be constructed manually or loaded from XML resource files which
are used to store the specification of tile sets and tile maps. A given
resource XML file may define multiple tile sets and maps and may even
reference other external XML resource files. This would allow a single
tile set to be used by multiple tile maps.

Assuming the following XML file called "example.xml"::

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <resource>
      <requires file="ground-tiles.xml" namespace="ground" />

      <rectmap id="level1">
       <column>
        <cell tile="ground:grass" />
        <cell tile="ground:house">
          <property type="bool" name="secretobjective" value="True" />
        </cell>
       </column>
      </map>
    </resource>

You may load that resource and examine it::

  >>> r = load('example.xml')
  >>> map = r['level1']

and then, assuming that level1 is a map::

  >>> scene = cocos.scene.Scene(map)

and then either manually select the tiles to display:

  >>> map.set_view(0, 0, window_width, window_height)

or if you wish for the level to scroll, you use the ScrollingManager::

  >>> from cocos import layers
  >>> manager = layers.ScrollingManager()
  >>> manager.add(map)

and later set the focus with::

  >>> manager.set_focus(focus_x, focus_y)

See the section on `controlling map scrolling`_ below for more detail.


XML file contents
-----------------

XML resource files must contain a document-level tag <resource>::

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <resource>
     ...
    </resource>

You may draw in other resource files by using the <requires> tag::

    <requires file="road-tiles.xml" />

This will load "road-tiles.xml" into the resource's namespace.
If you wish to avoid id clashes you may supply a namespace::

    <requires file="road-tiles.xml" namespace="road" />

If a namespace is given then the element ids from the "road-tiles.xml"
will be prefixed by the namespace and a period, e.g. "road:bitumen".

Other tags within <resource> are::

    <image file="" id="">

Loads file with pyglet.image.load and gives it the id which is used
by tiles to reference the image.

::

<imageatlas file="" [id="" size="x,y"]>

Sets up an image atlas for child <image> tags to use. Child tags are of
the form::

    <image offset="" id="" [size=""]>

If the <imageatlas> tag does not provide a size attribute then all
child <image> tags must provide one. Image atlas ids are optional as
they are currently not reference directly.

::

    <tileset id="">

Sets up a TileSet object. Child tags are of the form::

   <tile id="">
     [<image ...>]
   </tile>

The <image> tag is optional; these tiles may have only properties (or be
completely empty). The id is used by maps to reference the tile.

::

    <rectmap id="" tile_size="" [origin=""]>

Sets up a RectMap object. Child tags are of the form::

   <column>
    <cell tile="" />
   </column>


Map, Cell and Tile Properties
-----------------------------

Most tags may additionally have properties specified as::

   <property [type=""] name="" value="" />

Where type is one of "unicode", "int", "float" or "bool". The property will
be a unicode string by default if no type is specified.

Properties are accessed on the map, cell or tile using common dict operations
with some extensions. Accessing a property on a **cell** will fall back to look
on the **tile** if it's not found on the cell.

If a cell has a property ``player-spawn`` (boolean) and the tile that the cell
uses has a property ``move-cost=1`` (int) then the following are true::

    'player-spawn' in cell == True
    cell.get('player-spawn') == True
    cell['player-spawn'] == True

    'player-spawn' in tile == False
    tile.get('player-spawn') == None
    tile['player-spawn'] --> raises KeyError

    cell['move-cost'] == 1

You may additionally set properties on cells and tiles::

    cell['player-postion'] = True
    cell['burnt-out'] = True

and when the map is exported to XML these properties will also be exported.


Controlling Map Scrolling
-------------------------

You have three options for map scrolling:

1. never automatically scroll the map,
2. automatically scroll the map but stop at the map edges, and
3. scroll the map an allow the edge of the map to be displayed.

The first is possibly the easiest since you don't need to use a
ScrollingManager layer. You simple call map.set_view(x, y, w, h) on your
map layer giving the bottom-left corner coordinates and the dimensions
to display. This could be as simple as::

   map.set_view(0, 0, map.px_width, map.px_height)

If you wish to have the map scroll around in response to player
movement the ScrollingManager from the cocos.scrolling module
may be used.


Map Queries
-----------

Maps have a ``map.get_at_pixel(x, y)`` query which will return the Cell at that
position in the Map.

Given a Cell object you may also as ``map.get_neighbor(cell, direction)`` to get
the Cell which is in the direction (one of ``map.UP``, ``map.DOWN``,
``map.LEFT`` or ``map.RIGHT``.)


Rectangular Maps
----------------

Cells are stored in column-major order with y increasing up,
allowing [i][j] addressing::

 +---+---+---+
 | d | e | f |
 +---+---+---+
 | a | b | c |
 +---+---+---+

The cells property is list of lists: ``[['a', 'd'], ['b', 'e'],
['c', 'f']]``

Thus the cell at (0, 0) is 'a' and (0, 1) is 'd'.


Rectangular Map Collisions
--------------------------

A simple collider class is provided called RectMapCollider. This
collider is particularly useful in 2D side-scrolling platformers, or
top-down dungeon crawlers, to control movement of the player.

It assumes that the cells within your tile map have the boolean properties
"left", "right", "top" and "bottom" defined for those cells which are to be
collidable. See `Map, Cell and Tile Properties`_ for information about
properties.

A solid block would probably have all four sides set. A
platform would usually only have the top set so the player might jump up
from underneath and pass through.

For convenience these properties would typically be set ont he tiles
themselves, rather than on individual cells. Of course for the cell which
is the entrance to a secret area you could override a wall's properties to
set the side to False and allow ingress.

The basic interface to RectMapCollider is to invoke collide_map to collide
a single moving actor with a RectMapLayer.

You would typically override RectMapCollider to provide implementations
of its collision methods, for example::

 class PlayerCollider(tiles.RectMapCollider):
    def __init__(self, player):
        self.player = player

    def collide_bottom(self, dy):
        if self.player.dy:
            self.player.do_landed()

    def collide_left(self, dx):
        self.player.stop_walk()

    def collide_right(self, dx):
        self.player.stop_walk()

    def collide_top(self, dy):
        if self.player.dy:
            self.player.do_ouch()

Then you would instantiate the collider (possibly only once) passing in the
object representing the player which manages the player's velocity (dx and
dy). Once per update you would could something like::

    collider = PlayerCollider(player)
    dx, dy = player.velocity

    # using the player controls, gravity and other acceleration influences
    # update the velocity
    dx = ...
    dy = dy - gravity

    # get the player's current bounding rectangle
    last = player.get_rect()
    new = last.copy()
    new.x += dx
    new.y += dy

    # run the collider
    collider.collide_map(map, last, new, dy, dx)

    # move the player
    player.position = new.position

Another approach which may be simpler is to mix the collider into your
Player class, and then just provide those collide methods on your Player
class.

A third approach is to create a cocos Action derivative which handles the
player controls and collision. This is the approach taken in the
test/test_platformer.py code.

Support for TMX object layers
------------------------------

The TMX map format allows to specify 'object layers' also know as 'object groups'.

An 'object layer' is a collection of entities freely placed in the world, that is, they dont need to align with a tile map grid.

Objects can represent abstract 'ellipse', 'polygon', 'polyline', 'rect' or 'tile'

When a TMX file is loaded each 'object layer' produces an instance of :class:`~cocos.tiles.TmxObjectLayer`, the member '.objects' holds a list of the objects in the group, each one translated as an instance of :class:`~cocos.tiles.TmxObject`.

cocos does not intend to provide a real visualization of the TmxObjects, for debug purposes if you add TmxObjectLayer to the scene the axis aligned bounding box of each object will be draw.

Usually after load your app code iterates over '.objects' and takes appropriate actions, like

    - build a specific CocosNode for visualization(particle system, animated sprite,...) based in the TmxObject.usertype and other attributes, then add to the scene
    - translate to some model class, like a zone trigger or a patrol path and store in your level info

Other than the debug view, TmxObjectLayer provides some methods to select objects with certain properties or into a specified area.

Support for .TMX maps with hexagonal tiles
------------------------------------------

To have the same visualization in cocos than in Tiled Editor, you should set in Tiled the following map properties

    - 'orientation': 'hexagonal'
    - 'staggeraxis': 'x' (top and bottom hexagon sides parallel to the x axis)
    - 'staggerindex': 'even' (lower columns are the even ones)
    
Draw order is not guaranteed by cocos, so tilesets which expands outside the hexagon will not look good.
