Making an entire server with tilelayers makes you realize just how limited you are working with them. I've compiled a list of functions that would allow us to take much better advantage of them, that hopefully Stefan can take a look at.
- TServerLevel.tilelayers[#].onWall()/onWall2()/onWater()/onWater2(): One of the more frustrating limitations with tilelayers is that Graal does not have a way for you to define if a layer should be blocking or not. To circumvent that, this would be a great addition. It could allow developers to use any layer for blocking properties, and ignore them on other layers.
- TServerLevel.tilelayers[#].drawOverPlayer()
- TServerLevel.tilelayers[#].drawUnderPlayer()
The two above functions would allow developers to create the illusion that a player is moving between layers. I figured it would be easier to add something like this than writing actual layer support that includes it.
- Not as much a function as a suggestion, but support for backgrounds with parallax scrolling would be nice. At the moment, the only way to remotely achieve this is by having layer 0 fully transparent, create a GuiShowImgCtrl, GraalControl.bringToFront() and then change the x/y of it depending on how the player moves. It doesn't look remotely as good as it could though, simply because it follows your screen more than what would be preferred. See video below. Please note that the cloud image in it is some random image from Google used for testing purposes only.
- Layer readability for individual levels in a gmap. Right now, script wise at least, functionality is really poor for layers on gmaps.
Hopefully Stefan reads this and decides to enhance one of the features in Graal that really enhances gameplay more than anything else in the engine. I just needs a little bit of support, that's it.