Thanks!
Yes, on startup I loop over the map and convert certain tiles to game objects, set the edge tiles for ice and mud based on surrounding tiles, and throw in random decorations like grass and mushrooms. I think this sort of initialization on startup is pretty common, especially converting tiles to game objects.
If you look at my other Pico-8 projects on itch.io, you'll see a few other ways to handle the map:
- Basil's Adventure just converts tiles to game objects.
- Maximum Overdrive 2 is a roguelike -- it ignores the Pico-8 map and just generates map data in a Lua array.
- Gordy and the Monster Moon uses map memory as raw bytes -- I use external tooling to edit the map and store it, compressed, in the place the map usually goes. Then on startup I decompress the map into an array and go from there. This allows the map to be much bigger than the built-in one.
I've seen some projects do fancy things to make a bigger map entirely within the Pico-8 ecosystem, like this: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=46225
Hope that helps!