A 4x4 tiles terrain (partial) solution. Could be better?

[Sgrikkardo (Simone G.)]

Hello everyone, I had a problem similar to

Terrain tool support for multiple tile sizes

Hi folks, does anyone know if there’s an open feature request for the terrain tool to support multiple “tile” sizes? If not, I’ll be happy to file it. To explain a bit: my maps are 16x16, I don’t want to change that, but in addition to 16x16 tile graphics, I also have some 32x32’s in my texture atlases. Obviously, Tiled sees the “32’s” as 2x2-16’s (a square composed of 4 16x16 tiles) but, I would like Tiled to be able to “terrain” with those 32’s as well. In this case, I’d be able to tell tiled…

and while trying the new terrain features I might have stumbled upon a partial solution, working (at least) in the terrain-to-nothing transition case.

This is how I set up the terrains:

And this is the result:

In the above map are rendered three layers: the bottom layer is filled with the greenish tile, while the middle layer is used for the terrain. The top layer is used only to fake the convex corners, which you may have noticed are missing from the tileset (by design). The catch to make this terrain work is to use only the “center” red terrain in a Gingham check pattern… Like this:

This is far from optimal, but it’s still better than doing everything by hand.
I’m not sure if a similar solution could be adopted to integrate the use of the convex corners, but I think it’s possible.

I’m asking if anyone could point me up toward a better solution to this problem.

[eishiya]

Using a mixed tileset, you can disambiguate the different pieces enough to be able to include concave corners.

The above is just one way to label such a tileset, there are many such ways. The idea is that each interior tile has a unique combination of edges that matches to the opposite side, and the outer edges are labelled to match that.
In this case the concave corners’ inner parts are the same as the main inner parts, but you can use an extra edge colour to make sure those only occur together too if you need to.
This approach will work with non-empty transitions too, to either regular terrains (if you leave the edges empty) or other 4x4 terrains (if you use disambiguating edges appropriately). You could even have your disambiguating colours shared by all the 4x4 terrains in the set, as long as you vary the corner colours appropriately.

Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to do 4x4 terrains using only Terrains that doesn’t require careful stamping like you described. I prefer to use Automapping for this sort of thing, though that has drawbacks of its own (such as requiring layer names to be specified in the automapping rules).

[Sgrikkardo (Simone G.)]

Hello eishiya! I find your solution brilliant, I’m saving it to reference in the future if I’ll ever need 4x4 terrains with concave corners.

@eishiya

Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to do 4x4 terrains using only Terrains that doesn’t require careful stamping like you described. I prefer to use Automapping for this sort of thing, though that has drawbacks of its own (such as requiring layer names to be specified in the automapping rules).

Yeah, I thought of automapping, but since I don’t know in advance in which layer I might need a terrain it would encumber my workflow too much. Well, for now, stamping it is!