I guess for your average 2d tilemapped game an array is safe enough, and by far the easiest format to parse at run time when you are moving around/rendering the map.
If the maps were *huge* with only a limited amount of the 'grid' populated with tiles then I guess you could look for a more optimal solution but I serious doubt that it would be a problem. Tn real terms the memory taken up storing a 2d map in an array is tiny compared to other resources such as graphics and samples.
If the maps were *huge* with only a limited amount of the 'grid' populated with tiles then I guess you could look for a more optimal solution but I serious doubt that it would be a problem. Tn real terms the memory taken up storing a 2d map in an array is tiny compared to other resources such as graphics and samples.