Array Selection

[tomtom1923]

I am currently building a game and my map file contains all the data that specifies the attributes of the game field.

How do I select a range in an array element? For example I have an array of 768 elements, each element contains a string of information which represents the logic of constructing the map and rules. The first 7 characters represent the tile png, the 8th character determines if that tile is passable, etc, etc.

What method can I use to select only certain number of characters like a starting point to an ending point? Or would I want to convert to string and truncate it down?

[BigEd781]

That would be the String.SubString method. However, I would note that this is a terrible design and is going to lead to a maintenance nightmare. Why don't you instead define a class that exposes properties which have to do with the game board, i.e.,

class Tile
{
    public string ImageFileName { get; }
    public bool Passable( int x, int y ) { ... }
    // etc.
}

Now you can just maintain a 2d array of "Tile" objects and serialize them to disk when saving. So much nicer and so much more maintainable/extensible than dealing with raw strings everywhere.

[tomtom1923]

I think I explained it wrong.

When I read in the file initially I store it in one array as raw data, I then proceed to cut up the large string of data into separate arrays (although now I think I could probably use a multidimensional array or something). Those arrays or that one array is where all the information is stored for the game board.

Although I am liking this class idea.

[BigEd781]

Yes, I got it, but I would still recommend using classes. .NET has built in serialization methods, so it is very easy to write them to disk and read them back again as complete objects, no parsing required.

I suggested 2d array (or a List of Lists) because I assume they will be laid out on a map. It makes indexing much easier for you. You cold also create your own collection class, "TileMap" or something.