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TileBG - Tile and manage a image on the display background

Posted by ethanpil, Posted on January 3, 2012

2 votes
GitHub URL: 
http://github.com/ethanpil/tileBG

I'm still on my demo time, trying to get the hang of this Corona thing... loving every minute!

I was trying to do what I thought would be simple...tile an image on the background of the display. And thats what this does: It detects your display content height and attempts to calculate the minimum number of tiles needed (based on the size of the provided background tile.)

This is simple to use:
1) Include the function in your code (probably main.lua)

require( "tilebg" )

2) Now you can begin to use the function in your code.

local bg = tileBG() --add a new background, use the default settings

The function takes 3 optional arguments:

bgImageFile -> the filename of the background image to tile
bgWidth -> the width of the bgImagefile
bgHeight -> the height of the bgImagefile

Default values
If the function is run without any arguments then it will use these values:

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        bgImageFile = tileBG.jpg
        bgWidth = 100
        bgHeight = 100

In other words, you can quickly use this code if you have an image file called tileBG.jpg in your project folder, which is 100x100 pixels in size.

Its best to store the background in a local object, as demoed above:
local bg = tileBG()

Doing this, you can then use an build in method to self-destruct the tiles:

bg.removeBG()

Thats all there is to it. There is a full demo on the github repo. To make things easier, the function logs everything it does to the console...

Here is the include file:

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------------------------------------------------------------------------        
--      ==================
--       tilebg.lua v1.0
--      ==================
--
--  This creates a function tileBG() which will tile an image on the 
--  background of the display. It detects your display content height 
--  and attempts to calculate the minimum number of tiles needed (based 
--  on the size of the provided background tile.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------  
--      ---------
--      USAGE
--      ---------
--
--      1) Include the function in your code (probably main.lua)
--
--          require( "tilebg" )
--
--
--  2) Now you can begin to use the function in your code. 
--
--              local bg = tileBG() --add a new backgroud, use the default settings
--              
--  The function takes 3 optional arguments:
--
--              bgImageFile - the filename of the background image to tile
--              bgWidth - the width of the bgImagefile
--              bgHeight - the height of the bgImagefile
-- 
--      Default values
--  If the function is run without any arguments then it will use these values:
--
--              bgImageFile = tileBG.jpg
--              bgWidth = 100
--              bgHeight = 100
--
--      In other words, you can quickly use this code if you have an image file
--  called tileBG.jpg in your project folder, which is 100x100 pixels in size.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------  
--      ---------
--      CHANGELOG
--      ---------
--
--      1.0 - First release
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------        
 
function tileBG(bgImageFile,bgWidth,bgHeight)
   
   print ("TileBG started.")
   
        --Set the defaults, for rapid calls and just in case
        bgImageFile = bgImageFile or "tileBG.jpg"
        bgWidth = bgWidth or 100
        bgHeight = bgHeight or 100
        
        --Calculate how manytimes to repeat the image based on display size, math.ceil roundup for loops
        local bgRepeatX=math.ceil(display.contentWidth/bgWidth) --number of times to repeat bg on x axis
        local bgRepeatY=math.ceil(display.contentHeight/bgHeight) --number of times to repeat bg on y axis
        local bgCount = bgRepeatX*bgRepeatY --total bg images placed
   
        --Useful debug info
        print ("TileBG: display.contentWidth: " .. display.contentWidth)
        print ("TileBG: display.contentHeight: " .. display.contentHeight)
        print ("TileBG: bgImageFile: " .. bgImageFile)
        print ("TileBG: bgWidth: " .. bgWidth)
        print ("TileBG: bgHeight: " .. bgHeight)
        print ("TileBG: bgRepeatX: " .. bgRepeatX .. "(number of times to repeat bg on X axis)")
        print ("TileBG: bgRepeatY: " .. bgRepeatY .. "(number of times to repeat bg on Y axis)")
        
        --Loop through and place the bg image
        local bgImages = {} --images table
        local bgLocationY = 0 --start at origin
        local bgLocationX = 0 --start at origin
        
        local tiledBG=display.newGroup()
 
        for bgY=1,bgRepeatY do
                local bgLocationX = 0 --reset x position each time we go to next row
                for bgX=1,bgRepeatX do
                        tiledBG:insert(display.newImage( bgImageFile, bgLocationX, bgLocationY ))
                        print ("TileBG: Placed tile at x,y: " .. bgLocationX .. "," .. bgLocationY)
                        bgLocationX=bgLocationX+bgWidth
                end
                bgLocationY=bgLocationY+bgHeight
        end
 
        tiledBG:toBack() --make sure its on the background
        
   print ("TileBG: Placed " .. bgCount .. " images on background.")
   print ( "textureMemoryUsed: " .. system.getInfo( "textureMemoryUsed" ) )
   
        --a function to cleanup the bg
        function tiledBG.removeBG ()
                if tiledBG.numChildren then
                         print ("TileBG: Removing " .. tiledBG.numChildren .. " images from background.")
                        while tiledBG.numChildren > 0 do   -- we have have tiles left in the tiledbg group, so first clean them out             
                                        tiledBG:remove(tiledBG.numChildren) -- clean out the last member of the group (work from the top down!)
                        end
                end     
                tiledBG:removeSelf() --whats left is now an empty group. remove it.
            print ("TileBG: Removed background.")
                return
        end
 
   --Send everything back to mama
   return tiledBG
  
 end