Connecting tiles to make a large image based on text file

Question

If I am building my level from a text file

0,0,0,0,0
0,1,0,1,0
0,2,1,0,0
0,0,0,0,0

and I want to draw a large image, how do I go about doing that? do I take the image, separate it in tiles (the same size as the other ones) and then add a value to each image

0,1,2,3,4,5,6
0,7,8,9,10,11,12

or is there another way to do this? Lets say I want to add a house, or a something like this ship?

Answer 1

Old-school RPG engines like that typically render 2 or more layers of tile maps, f.e.:

• Ground layer (below sprites; roads, floor, etc.)
• Upper layer (above sprites; stuff in front; the upper part of the ship in your image)

This allows sprites to walk behind stuff on the upper layer. So in your text file, you'd define 2 layers per tilemap, f.e.:

// ground layer
1,1,1,1,1,
1,2,2,1,1,
1,2,2,1,1,
1,1,1,1,1,

// upper layer
0,0,0,0,0,
0,3,0,0,3,
0,4,3,0,0,
0,0,0,0,0

(I'd recommend using 0 as "no tile")