Supporting tile types larger than 9?

[Exiled]

I'm creating a map editor for a game project. My method of mapping is having a large 2D array of chars(map[300][300];). For different types of tiles, I simply set map[x][y] to a different value. I then use a function in the drawing/collision(inside of the game's client) to determine what type of tile it is, what to draw, and if it is blocked or not. I have saving/loading maps finished. My problem is having only 10 tiles available - 0-9. If I create a 10th tile and still write it to the file, when I load it into the game/editor it will first read the '1' then the '0' which wouldn't be correct.

Is it possible to read two digits at a time from a file using something such as file >> map[x][y];? If not, what other type of method can I use? For I cannot make one char out of two chars.. I'm just kind of confused at the moment. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you!

[Galik]

It all depends on the format of your data. You could read your data in as int and convert that to char. Then you could have data like this:

00 00 00 00 00 00 ...
00 00 01 23 00 35 ...
00 05 00 00 00 00 ...
...
00 00 00 00 00 00 ...

And read it in like:

char map[300][300];

int i;
for(int x = 0; x < 300; ++x)
{
    for(int y = 0; y < 300; ++y)
    {
    	if(file >> i) map[x][y] = i;
    }
}

[Exiled]

Hmm... Wouldn't a method like that still be reading simply each digit by itself and not two digits in one loop?

[Galik]

When you read an int, it reads all the digits (up to the next non-digit character) as one number.

[Exiled]

Ah, alright. I tried doing that, however nothing is being written into the file except for spaces... I have also made map[300][300] unsigned chars so map[x][y] is able to hold values up to 255.

This is my saving code... Everything seems fine to me. :S

void save(unsigned char map[300][300]) {
     ofstream file;
	 file.open ("dat001.dat");

	for (int x = 0; x < 300; x++) {
		for (int y = 0; y < 300; y++) {
            file << map[x][y];
            file << " ";
		}
	}

	file.close();
}

This is my loading code, although it's pretty much the same thing as the text you have supplied above.

void load(unsigned char map[300][300]) {
     ifstream file;
	 file.open ("dat001.dat");

    int i;
    
	for (int x = 0; x < 300; x++) {
		for (int y = 0; y < 300; y++) {
            if(file >> i) map[x][y] = i;
		}
	}

	file.close();
}

Also, thank you for helping.

[Disch]

I would not use text files for this. This is much simpler if you store the file as binary. Open the file as ios_base::binary and use read() and write() instead of << and >>:

void save(unsigned char map[300][300]) {
     ofstream file;
     file.open ("dat001.dat", ios_base::out | ios_base::binary);

     file.write( reinterpret_cast<const char*>( map ), 300 * 300 * sizeof(unsigned char) );
}

Your load will look similar.

[Exiled]

Alright, I started storing the file as binary. Also, I have gotten tile types more than 10 working as well.. I was saving ints into the file instead of chars. Since 10 will be represented by an ASCII character, it will read 10 as a char and then load that into the map's array. It was a mix of me being stupid, and a slight logic error.

Thank you guys for helping. (@Disch and Galik)