Very long and very complicated explanation below. Don’t bother reading unless you fully understand advanced flowlab mechanics.
I was about to fall asleep when I had one of those can’t fall asleep thinking ideas.
So let’s make a square, it can only move on the grid. Make a filter to check if it moves left and right 3, minus in reverse, same with up and down.
Now we have a grid moving block that counts its position in chunks of 3, making a chunk map.
Have a black box on game layer follow the player with adjusted coordinates to stay at the top corner of the screen. This is the map box.
Have a mini square spawn in the center of the map box on player spawn. When you move 3 spaces, the spawned mini square moves the opposite direction in pixels compared to the size of the mini square while still gridlocked based on the player position using an equation.
If there is no block spawned in the center of the map square, a new mini square spawns. As you move around aimlessly as the player, every 3 grid chunks you move, the mini squares on the map space move the opposite direction in pixels, and a new mini square spawns in the center of the map space if there isnt one there.
You are now drawing map lines.
Set the mini squares to have raycasting, and play an animation based on raycast to other blocks, for example,
if there is one mini square, it plays []
If there are 2 mini squares then []
If one above then
?]
L_]
Well I’m sure you get the idea, instead of
[]
[][_]
Animations play based on removed edges that raycast detects in 4 directions. It gives the map a nicer open feel instead of squares.
So essentially the idea is that map chunks spawn in the map area when the player moves 3 grid spaces (or 5 or however many you want) and move the opposite direction by pixels equation relative to the pixels the player is at, and how do you make the map mini squares not cover the game level? Well, proximity to the map square = 100% opacity, otherwise nor 0% opacity if the mini squares float off of the map square. You can draw any shape map you want without a level built, but if you have a level in your game, the mini squares can only spawn where the player can go, so if there are walls, you’ll see it in the mini map. You can set the mini map on the highest layer, and have a pause menu opacity 100 a black screen behind the mini squares and have them 100 opacity when paused, so you can see the whole map when paused if you make a super complicated scroll and reset on unpause feature to view the map on the menu.
If you have any clue what I’m talking about, test it. If not, don’t worry, I’ll test it out myself when I have time. If it works, I’ll have a metroid room camera and metroid map drawing system concept both in just 2 days of testing.
Crazy ideas come when you take long breaks.
Sometimes the craziest ideas are just before you sleep or in the shower. Brainstorming isn’t always as effective as relaxed daydreaming.