The History (and Future) of MHFramework's Layered Tile Maps

The original version of the MHFramework tile map system (circa 2004) consisted of the following layers:

• Floors
• Items
• Walls
• Ceilings

The overwhelming task of creating assets for the Beltzhian Marauders world led me to redesign the map structure to cut down on the number of raw assets that need to be created (and also reduce memory consumption in the process).  The evolved version (circa 2008) contained these layers:

• Floors
• Floor Decals
• Items
• Walls
• Wall Decals
• Ceilings

The lessons learned through creating various games and prototypes in the meantime has made me realize that by aggregating things together and using more sophisticated rendering and collision detection algorithms, the default layers for MHF3 might look something like this:

• Floors
• Floor Decals
• Walls
• Wall Decals
• Actors