Doubt about maps development (non tiled)

[Prat]

Hi! We have this doubt, me and somes friends are currently working on a 2D sidescroller, we want to make a game with simple mechanics but with a heavy artistic focus.
The question comes when we decide how to create the maps in this game. 2D toolkit have a very easy to use interface to develop tiled based maps, but we have beeing seeing some examples of 2D platformer games like Rayman Origins/Legends, Limbo, Dust an Elysian tail, Braid (amongst others) and it looks like they dont use tailmaps. We wonder, how do they made this maps? If the colisionable structures on the ground are created from simple blocks and rectangles, how should we paint them? We just put sprites with textures over them? Do they draw the entire map and then put invisible structures on the ground so the player can walk there?

So many doubts! Haha, we would really appreciate some help ^^

Thanks!

[unikronsoftware]

Well you could just build them out of sprites (with colliders). Group the sprites with a static sprite batcher, and tk2d will merge the colliders for you. You can save that for optimisation at a later date though, its not essential. I don't think those levels are "painted" like a tilemap based game.

[Trisonte]

Thanks a lot! I didn't know about the Static Sprite Batcher!

Another quick question, if I want a non tiled background on my game, how should I handle this? For example, if we are developing for a native resolution of 1280x720, the background should be composed of one sprite with a giant picture in it ((X>1280) x 720)? Or we should divide the background into many sprites (horizontally) containing separate parts of the picture?

Thank you!

[unikronsoftware]

Either try dicing (http://2dtoolkit.com/docs/latest/advanced/sprite_dicing.html) or use Sprite from texture (http://2dtoolkit.com/docs/latest/reference/sprite_from_selected_texture.html)