Tilebase movement with tilemap collisions

Phaser 3
1

I was browsing old forum and there was some discussion about the topic. However those threads were quite old, so i was thinking to ask again about this topic.

I’d like to create oldschool Ultima style game, but as a freshman i stumbled upon collisions not working when moving character by position. There is one example, which kind of fits to this: https://phaser.io/examples/v3/view/game-objects/tilemap/static/grid-movement

On the example we’re checking against tile.index.

// Tilebased movement: UP
    this.input.keyboard.on('keydown_W', (event) => {
      let tile = this.elements.getTileAtWorldXY(this.player.x, this.player.y - this.tileSize, true)

      if (tile.index === 3) {
        console.log('Blocked!')
      } else {
        this.player.y -= this.tileSize
      }

    })

I don’t know if i have done something wrong with the tilemap layer, but i have multiple indexes there, so of course i could check against them all, but is there a way i could check against whole tilemap layer?

2

Okay, seems that -1 tile index did the trick. Still would love to have discussion around this topic, since my implementation is not probably elegant :rofl:

// Tilebased movement: LEFT
    this.input.keyboard.on('keydown_A', (event) => {
      let tile = this.blockedLayer.getTileAtWorldXY(this.player.x - this.tileSize, this.player.y, true)

      if (tile.index !== -1) {
        console.log('Blocked!')
      } else {
        this.player.x -= this.tileSize
      }
    })
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3

I’m very interested in this topic as well! :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Under the default settings, -1 is indeed the index used for an empty tile. Your current solution is perfectly fine. Using a separate layer to determine which tiles should be solid can be powerful because solidity doesn’t have to be linked to what the player sees.

Assuming you’re talking about Arcade physics, a general rule of thumb is that you should only move bodies by manipulating their velocity. If you directly move a body into a solid tile, there’s no way the physics system can tell which direction it came from, so it won’t behave as expected.

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5

I’m not sure if i need physics for this kind of game, but if you were to use physics and moving with velocity how would you go to moving player one tile / key stroke?

I think for camera following character i need physics anyway, so probably need to write again controlling part…

6

You just wouldn’t rely on the physics engine to handle collisions with the tilemap, only collisions with other objects. However, I personally wouldn’t mix grid-based movement with physics because collisions would end up misaligning the characters.

A camera can follow any object, no matter if it’s controlled by physics or not. See the examples.

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