Does anyone have good resources for learning how to use Layers as separate layers of game data?

Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I’m making an old-school style RPG, using Tiled for the map tile layout.

I’m currently using a bunch of other tables to contain other information about the game.

I have a table called Readables_Locations.xls, and on that I just type a number into any cell where a Readable object should trigger a readable popup in the world.

I have a table called Cutscene_Locations.xls, and on that I just type a number into any cell where a Cutscene should be triggered in the world.

I have a table called QuestEvent_Locations.xls, and on that I just type a number into any cell where a Quest Event should be triggered in the world.

This all gets a bit fiddly, because there’s a lot of back-and-forth between Tiled and these other tables, doing fairly dumb work of scrolling around to find the same place on the table, to match the map, just to type in a number there.

I’m wondering, does anyone else use data in this sort of way? And have you managed to come up with a better workflow, like using Layers in Tiled, and using those layers for this extra information?

I’m imagining that I could make a layer called QuestEventLocations, one called ReadablesLocations, one called CutsceneLocations, etc, and type these trigger values in there, and just output them as CSVs and bring them into Game Salad. That would keep the content creator in Tiled, working with a more WYSIWYG interface, making it more fun, more intuitive and faster to build the game.

I thought I’d ask here for any advice, warnings, limitations of trying this approach, before I start, as I’ve not used Layers or anything in Tiled yet.

And if Tiled doesn’t really support this way of working currently, I was hoping to write up a feature request or two that would make this possible, and also streamline the process.

Any feedback or advice here would be much appreciated! :smile:

  • Murray
2

So, the most common approach for these kind of things, is to add an object layer and place rectangle objects with custom types/properties. You can configure the color used for each type in the Preferences, to quickly tell them apart.

In your case, you could just have one or more object layers, as you prefer, and place the following object types as tile-aligned rectangles (using Snap to Grid option):

  • Readable: With custom ‘text’ property that has the text to show as its value.
  • Cutscene: With custom ‘id’ property that is the value of the cutscene it should trigger.
  • Quest: With custom ‘id’ property that is the value of the quest it should trigger.

If you need these as CSV, you’ll currently have to write your own exporter for that. Maybe it would not be so hard to do it in Python, which should be possible starting with Tiled 0.14.