best way to store level map data ?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

hello, i’m trying to continue with my remake of wolf3d using ue4, i have lost the entire project because my hard drive crashed a year and a half a go, i have the assets because they were in another hard disk, i want to improve a little bit all that i have made in the start of that hobby project and i need some advise.

when i started the project i began to made the level in the ue4 editor, now i’m thinking if i make some kind of codification for the tiles and props of the level i can make a string representation of the level using letters or/and numbers to know what i need to spawn when the level loads, i know how to do all of this, the only thing that i don’t know is how to store all the level map data on ue4.

for example if i need a red brick block it will be represented as b1, blue brick block will be b2 and so on.

in the first place i was thinking of using an xml file, but i asked that opportunity and someone told me that xml will be not effective.

what will the best way/practice to store this kind of data to be retrieved at the start of the level to spawn the entire level (bricks, doors, lights, props, enemies) at runtime ?

thank you in advance for all the help.

2

For starters if you select any actor and ctrl+C it, you can paste it into notepad.

3

Two ways:
Use DataTables to define your level data in one or more simple CSV files.

4

Or you can store the data in a SaveGame object. This needs to be created in UE4, so is a good option if you are building some kind of level creator.

(My kid “helped” by pressing post in the middle of my reply.)

5

thank you for the answers, i will dive DataTables a try.

don’t know if i will use a level creator, but for sure i want to spawn the level at runtime, i think it will let me to create all the wolf3d levels more quickly than use the level editor to create each level.