Question

I am trying to make some kind of map maker, using the old 2D style of games such as Final Fantasy 4. Basically they had everything set up in a grid where each square on the grid might have taken 16×16 or 32×32 pixels.

I would like to start out small, and get the main things down first. Such as generating a map which could be, say, 128×128. This means, that I should be able to feed the program an array of numbers representing the different tiles available, and then the program should make a new picture by placing the tiles as the array specifies (So the one in Index 0 will be placed at 0,0 etc).

I plan to show the picture when I am done, but that should be easy as pie.

I’ve been looking around for a solution and all I could find was merging pictures on top of each other (as in layers on top of each other), rather than side by side, so can any one point me in the right direction? I’d like it if I didn’t have to rely on 3rd party libraries, as this is more of a learning experience than practical application 🙂

Answer 1

First, create the output BufferedImage to be the size you need.

BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(width, height, imageType);

Then, get the Graphics2D object from the image and start drawing the smaller image in the places they need to be in the resulting image:

Graphics2D g2 = image.createGraphics();
for (BufferedImage img : images) {
  g2.drawImage(img, x, y, null);
}

Then, you can save the image to the desired format: jpg, png or gif.

ImageIO.write(image, "jpg", file);