Help About Tower Defense type Game?

[jaypaul]

Hi Friends,

I am working on a tower defense type game. A while ago I posted asking about maze logic and was kindly directed towards A-star pathfinding. It is perfect. I understand the concept and it makes sense. Now the problem I am having is how to do the tile-based map? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I just want to do a straight square map comprised of squares. I realize a 2D Array would probably be the best way just such as:

int[][] map = new int[100][100]

where there would be 100 x 100 tiles. I can then populate the array with numbers ie 0 = walkable, 1 = unwalkable. I can have my A* algorithm return the set of tiles to move to.

My problem is that I don't want my game to be in pixels and I'm having a hard time understanding how to make the game appear tile based and large enough to be playable? ie. 1 tile = 30x30 pixels. If we are looking at it in terms of model and view, I understand the model part, but I am having a hard time translating to the view?

How do I create a tile based view so that the user can only place towers on a tile(the mouse click location could be any point inside the tile)?

Also, how would I keep the enemy units moving smoothly between tiles and not just jumping to the center of each tile?

Thanks
Paul