Offering Help with Docs

Hi, all. I’m a new Tiled user. It was recommended by a much more seasoned game dev friend. It’s a great program(!) but it’s going to take me a bit to get my feet wet.

In the meantime, I wanted to offer help with docs. I’m a tech writer for work and actually have a little experience with Sphinx/RST. I read through what’s there and everything seems to be pretty solid, but docs are an ongoing project, so if there’s anything I can do, let me know. :slightly_smiling_face: . Looking at the github, I’m not sure the policy on docs/contributors.

Other than that, hi, happy creating.

Hey Matthew, welcome to the Tiled forums and thank you for your offer to help improving the documentation!

My policy is all help is appreciated. I realize this doesn’t give much guidance, but I’m not sure what guidance would be helpful (help in this area would also be appreciated).

Since you’re a new Tiled user, maybe you’ll already find areas where the documentation could use some work, so feel free to open issues about this especially if you’d like to help improve it. It will provide an area where we can also discuss how to improve certain topics.

There are also a number of issues already open about the documentation. Though since little effort has been made to actively open issues about undocumented features, these issues are somewhat random and don’t cover the main missing functionality.

Currently I’m updating the documentation with changes related to the upcoming Tiled 1.4. If you install the Tiled 1.4 Beta you can also try to help with this. These are the notes I’ve been making about necessary updates in this context:

Tiled 1.4 Related Updates

  • Document how to work with projects and the “Open file in Project” (Ctrl+P) action
  • Working with Objects
    • Needs note about tile object alignment
    • Needs to talk about “Connections Between Objects”
  • Mention support for using maps as images somewhere (metatiles)
  • Working with Layers
    • Needs to mention new tint color property
  • Custom Properties
    • Needs screenshot update
    • Needs to point out that the reference to the object types file is now in the project (was global)
  • Templates
    • Make a note that templates are automatically reloaded
    • Needs updated screenshot since file system view was removed from “Templates” view and it was renamed to “Template Editor”
    • Needs section about how “Template Editor” is used alongside “Project” view

Undocumented Older Features

  • Exporting map as image is not mentioned anywhere
  • Managing tilesets used by a map is not covered (adding, removing and replacing tilesets)
  • Editing Tilesets
    • Tile Animation Editor needs new screenshot
    • Tile Animation Editor needs to be updated regarding default duration and changing multiple frames at the same time (also affects Future Extensions section)
    • Tile Collision Editor should mention that collision shapes can be rendered on the map
    • Tile Collision Editor should refer to SuperTiled2Unity instead of Tiled2Unity (checking that the text is still applicable)

Any help with these updates would also be appreciated, though I guess it would be better if I cover the recent additions.