mApSCII

Extending my Ludum Dare game and trying something new: ASCII maps. TextMate's column selection (hold option while making a selection) and column typing makes expanding, contracting and editing a level stupid easy.

These are the four levels I built so far. Each map is a combined ground (for collisions) and entity map (player, exits, threats, etc). Solid ground is represented by #, empty by a space. The player is P, the exit E, and threats use other letters and symbols that either look like or otherwise relate to the threat being represented.

I can break sections up with vertical bars which are then ignored by the parser (currently using this to break levels up by screen width). Commas are a hold over from CVS-based maps but I kept them because they square each cell visually and suggest a grid that makes finding my place when editing easier.

ActionScript 3's string handling is on par with JavaScript which is a nice change of pace from Objective-C. Actually everything seems to be a nice change of pace from Objective-C these days.