Hello!
This is my first time using Tiled so I apologize if the question is a bit dumb. I am using an asset package that has mostly 16x16 tilesets, but also one 8x8 “decorations” tileset (mostly consisting of different flowers) which I want to use over my 16x16 grass. The issue is that by default it seems like I can only place these decorations in the bottom left corner of the cells. Is there any way in which I can place them in any of the 4 corners of the bigger cell?
EDIT: I think I found a workaround by using an Object layer instead of a normal tile layer. Is this the best way of achieving this?
EDIT2: Is there a way of placing the objects randomly? I know about the option in the toolbar for placing tiles randomly, but I can’t find it for objects.
You can use Tile Objects to place decorations off-grid, yes. However, this is usually best for large decorations that are few in number, as Objects are usually less performant than tiles once loaded in-game, unless you take special care to treat them as static geometry, or make a custom export format that converts them to regular tiles.
You cannot place random Tile Objects. You could write a script that accomplishes this, but there’s no built-in feature. There’s been a feature request for it, but for the performance reasons above, it’s not the best idea.
Alternate approaches to your initial problem:
Using an 8x8 map grid and loading your other tilesets as 8x8. This is how such tilesets were often used in practice in retro games. Of course, this can make the 16x16 tilesets less convenient to use, since each tile would be four tiles.
Using extra layers for the small decorations and offsetting those layers by 8px horizontally and/or vertically.
Expanding your decor tiles to 16x16 and making variants of them for each corner, with the other corners being transparent. This would mean you’d need up to four decor layers if you want to cake multiple decorations on the same 16x16 cell, however.
Expanding your decor tiles to 16x16, but creating a set of combinations of solid grass/dirt and 1-2 decors. You’d be able to use them in the same layer as the grass/dirt tiles, then, no additional layers needed. While a full set of combinations would be very large, in practice you’ll probably only need a few combinations.
There’s an issue open to allow Tiled to have layers with different tile sizes in a single map, which would be a nice solution to this issue as well. However, due to being difficult to implement, it probably won’t be added for a long time. Tile Size per layer not per Map · Issue #149 · mapeditor/tiled · GitHub
For each layer of your map, there is an option at the top that looks like a move icon (has arrows pointing up, down left, and right). This option allows you to offset the tile grid in quarter increments in any direction.
There is nothing wrong with creating tile variants, because different optimization strategies for different maps can involve minimizing the number of layers involved. But in general you’re not going to get a gigantic performance hit for having 3 layers offset 50% left, up, and diagonally.
