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This section contains useful information for external libraries and tools related to LITIENGINE Game Development.

Libraries and Tools

Third-Party Libraries

There is only a bare minimum of third party libraries included in the LITIENGINE, which we want to mention here thankfully:

Steamworks

How to use steamworks4j SteamAPI from Eclipse?

LITIENGINE uses the steamworks4j wrapper for the SteamAPI to grant access to Steam features from java. When developing a game that uses these features, you need to execute a few extra steps in order to support the functionality from the IDE.

  1. You need to have created the game on Steamworks in order to have an appID

  2. Create an steam_appid.txt file containing only the appID of your game

  3. Copy the steam_appid.txt to the working directory of your app.

    For debugging and running your app from Eclipse (or other IDEs), the application will be run, using the javaw.exe. Your working directory will typically be something like C:\Program Files\Java\jdkX.X.X_XXX\bin, which is where your javaw.exe is located. This, of course, depends on your environment (workspace/project) Java Build Path configuration of the editor

  4. From here on, you can just follow the original tutorial here.

Tiled Map Editor

What is 'Tiled'?

From the official Tiled docs page:

Tiled is a 2D level editor that helps you develop the content of your game. Its primary feature is to edit tile maps of various forms, but it also supports free image placement as well as powerful ways to annotate your level with extra information used by the game. Tiled focuses on general flexibility while trying to stay intuitive.

With Tiled editor, you can create orthogonal, hexagonal, and isometric Tile maps in no time. It is the absolute go-to tool for 2D Tile-based mapping.

How do I use Tiled?

For a general understanding of the mapping process with Tiled editor, we encourage you to have a look at its plentiful documentation. However, we will refer to a few LITIENGINE specific aspects of creating maps with Tiled in the sections about Map Objects and custom properties

Why is tile mapping not a part of the utiLITI editor?

LITIENGINE had its origin in the idea of writing a Java 2D game engine without including any external libraries (what were we thinking?). Yet, we believe that it is key to success to be able to sometimes rely on other people's expertise, especially when having limited resources. The Tiled editor has been developed by a vivid community for approximately ten years, offering a universal standard for tile maps. In other words, it just works. There is simply no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to tile mapping.