Level Generator Help

[danik550]

Okay so I dont really know how to explain this but I'll try.

I currently have a platformer game with hardcoded platforms in specific places.

I want something like a level generator with 0 representing no platform and 1 platform.

Struct?
1,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,1
1,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,1
1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,1

and so on

Then have a function that will search this struct or list or something for thoes 1's and 0's and will create a platform for 1 and nothing for 0.

All I need is to know how to even search for something like this on the internet since im not finding anything that I need.

[MikeStgt]

I dont really know how to explain

A proverb says, if you can't tell in words you did not sufficiently think through it.

In case it's only about storing a lot of 0s and 1s, try bitset -- http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/bitset/bitset/

[Duthomhas]

You won't, because that isn't how people do it.

Use a level-generator program to create the level you want.
Then save it to a level file.
Then include the level file's data in your code (or in your program's assets folder).
Presumably your code has a function to read a level from file/stream, right?

[Ganado]

I currently have a platformer game with hardcoded platforms in specific places.

And how you currently storing those hardcoded platforms?

Edit: For example, you might have a list/array of platforms or something like that. But with load-from-a-file changes, you can still have this list of platforms, but you should set the values of those platforms based off the values in a file.
Note that data containers like std::vector are resizable at run-time, unlike C arrays.

[danik550]

I do indeed have a data container

std::vector<Platform> platforms;

and then

platforms.push_back(Platform(nullptr, sf::Vector2f(900.0f, 25.0f), sf::Vector2f(450.0f, 890.0f)));

With Texture, size and position argument

[Ganado]

Okay good, so from there, you can hopefully imagine doing something like this:

std::vector<Platform> platforms;

std::ifstream fin("level.txt");

sf::Vector2f size;
sf::Vector2f position;
while (fin >> size.x >> size.y >> position.x >> position.y) // extract information from file
{
    platforms.push_back(Platform(nullptr, size, position));
}

And your level.txt might look like this:

900.0 25.0 450.0 890.0
123.0 456.0 789.0 1000.0

(two platforms)

That's one way to do it, and it would be a good start. But it sounds like you want to store the entire map in a file in a different way, where you have a tile-based map?

If that's the case, then you'd loop through your file in a different way.

You could do something like this:

level_grid.txt

7 3
0 0 0 0 0 0 1
0 1 1 0 1 1 1
1 1 0 0 0 0 0

I put the width and height of the map in there for easier parsing (imo).

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <fstream>

/// BEGIN BOILERPLATE -- DON'T COPY THIS ///

struct Texture { };

namespace sf {
    struct Vector2f {
        Vector2f(float x, float y) { }
    };
}

struct Platform {
    Platform(Texture* texture, const sf::Vector2f& size, const sf::Vector2f& pos)
    {
        // ...
    }
};

/// END BOILERPLATE ///

int main()
{
    std::vector<Platform> platforms;
   
    /*
        7 3
        0 0 0 0 0 0 1
        0 1 1 0 1 1 1
        1 1 0 0 0 0 0
    */
    std::ifstream fin("level_grid.txt");
    
    int width;
    int height;
    
    fin >> width >> height;


    for (int y = 0; y < height; y++)
    {
        for (int x = 0; x < width; x++)
        {
            char tile;
            fin >> tile;
            
            if (tile == '1')
            {
                sf::Vector2f size(1.0, 1.0); // ???
                sf::Vector2f position(x, y); // idk if this is what you want
                platforms.push_back(Platform(nullptr, size, position));

                std::cout << "platform at (" << x << ", " << y << ")\n";
            }
        }
    }

}

If you wanted to combine multiple horizontal 1s into one platform, or something like that, you'd have to do the logic for that as well.