I’m relatively new to Tiled, and before I started using it I had been messing around with Unity’s Auto Tile functionality, but am currently not proceeding with Unity as my game engine.
I am making a sidescroller, and can (mostly) wrap my mind around Unity’s Auto Tile creation for use with that type of game (reference here: https://pandaroo.itch.io/tilemap-auto-rule-tile-unity-template for general idea, even if I’m not using that exact template)
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to replicate this type of functionality in Tiled. Terrain only seems to be designed for a 3x3 set of tiles (with maybe some minor randomization within it) and then tries to place as the whole 3x3 tile each time rather than letting you draw out the whole thing? (Unless I’m missing somewhere where I can paint terrain as a 1 tile tall). This would not likely meet the needs of drawing something like stairs or bridges unless I’m greatly misunderstanding.
Automapping also doesn’t seem to be the right answer, but it may also be because I just outright don’t understand the ruleset process. (I was hopeful to find an extension that simplified the ruleset creation process to be akin to Unity’s “click these allow/disallow arrows”, but it doesn’t seem like anyone has anything like that yet).
I did some searching on the forums, but most of the questions around sidescrollers/platformers don’t seem to be quite based on this (or have answers). Is there a good method of reproducing this type of functionality in Tiled?
As an example, here’s some tilesets I’m trying to work with:
If you hold Ctrl while using the Terrain brush, you can paint only a corner to get a 2x2 terrain blob.
Unfortunately Tiled doesn’t really have tools for single-tile-wide terrains. Wang sets with edges can work with them, but the tool doesn’t work correctly until you have tiles assigned to every combination of the Wang colours and you can’t mark edges as “transparent/no-tile”, which makes the tool not very useful for sidescrollers.
Slopes also don’t work well with the existing tools, for similar reasons.
Automapping can be set up to work for both, but it would still be tedious to make the maps, as you can’t just “paint” or extrude your terrain. You’d have to set up the endpoints to make it work correctly, which isn’t a very natural way to work.
I’ve asked on this forum about workflows for sidescroller tilesets with slopes and got no responses and posted about related problems, but didn’t get any useful response ): Since Tiled apparently can’t do this, I’m using custom tools to build my maps, and importing the results into Tiled to place details and gameplay markup.
Thanks for the information, even the holding Ctrl bit was helpful.
I hope to see an enhancement to Tiled to better support sidescrollers at some point (or someone makes an extension that mimics Unity’s autotile setup).
@eishiya I have a similar problem with a rather complex tileset which you can see in my post. You say, you use custom tools to build your maps. My I ask which one? I actually see no way to use complex platformer tilesets. I checked out “Tilesetter” but it doesn’t seem to fit for that task.
Custom = I had to code them myself, with my specific tiles and use cases in mind. Here’s an old post about some of my tools, maybe it’ll give you some ideas for getting started with your own.
Can’t imagine all ppl working with these complex assets tile by tile. It takes a lot of time to even build a single map that way. And I cant code a tool by myself. Maybe someone got an Idea to make it possible to save some time building maps with complex assets? Or can it only be done with unity auto tiling function maybe?
Some of those “complex” tilesets are just meant for a particular level editor or engine that works differently from anything else. For example, RPG Maker tilesets aren’t complex, but they can’t be used with Tiled’s Terrain tool.
Some of them are made by artists with no significant level editing experience with the assumption that either everyone places tiles one by one anyway (as they often do when testing their tilesets), or that there are tools out there that can handle any kind of tileset.
From what I understand, the Unity Rule Tile feature works similarly to how Tiled’s Automapping feature works, except with a better UI at the cost of extra limitations. The problem with both is that setting them up for complex tilesets is a headache and a big upfront timesink, and placing tiles still isn’t as natural as you might want them to be, especially for tilesets with gentle/multi-tile slopes.
