Tile engine

A tile-based video game is a type of video or video game where the playing area consists of small rectangular, square, parallelogram or hexagonal graphic images, referred to as tiles. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a tileset. Tiles are laid out adjacent to one another in a grid; usually, some tiles are allowed to overlap, for example, when a tile representing a unit is overlaid onto a tile representing terrain. Tile-based games usually simulate a top-down or "2.5D" view of the playing area, and are almost always two-dimensional.

Tile-based games are not a distinct video game genre; rather, the term refers to the technology a game engine uses for its visual representation. For example, Ultima III is a role-playing video game and Civilization is a turn-based strategy game, but both use tile-based graphic engines. Tile-based engines allow developers to create large, complex gameworlds efficiently and with relatively few art assets.

Tile-based video games usually use a texture atlas for performance reasons. They also store metadata about the tiles, such as collision, damage, and entities, either with a 2-dimensional array mapping the tiles, or a second texture atlas mirroring the visual one but coding metadata by colour. This approach allows for simple, visual map data, letting level designers create entire worlds with a tile reference sheet and perhaps a text editor, a paint program, or a simple level editor (many older games included the editor in the game). Examples of tile-based game engine/IDEs include RPG Maker, Game Maker, Construct, Godot, and Tiled.

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