I've always just made special items seperate sprites with their own coordinates.

Mason McCuskey
Spin Studios
www.spin-studios.com

You could (if you are making a multi-layer map) put the game objects end NPC's on the second layer in their starting positions then in your tile engine, update their positions accordingly. This might make it easier to plan out the complete level at a glance.

How would you all go about putting items into a side scroller?

Would you have items as a tile attribute, so that the item is just blitted transparently over top of a tile, and when the sprite touches the tile, the item attribute is set to zero?

Or would you just have the tiles as sprites with their own x,y coords?

I think that the second would look better, but the first would be less work. How would you do this?

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"can't waste the day when the night brings a hearse"

I wouldn't make the item a sprite if it doesn't need to move. I just make a separate item struct that contains world_pos_x, world_pos_y, and item_state. That is what I think is the easiest way . . .