# Terrain tool feedback, round three

**URL:** <https://discourse.mapeditor.org/t/terrain-tool-feedback-round-three/5232>\
**Category:** Suggestions\
**Created:** [August 9, 2021, 9:51pm UTC](https://discourse.mapeditor.org/t/terrain-tool-feedback-round-three/5232 "2021-08-09T21:51:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eevee](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.mapeditor.org/eevee/32/1074_2.png) [@eevee](https://discourse.mapeditor.org/u/eevee)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2021, 9:51pm UTC](https://discourse.mapeditor.org/t/terrain-tool-feedback-round-three/5232/1 "2021-08-09T21:51:05Z")

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Hey! I only just noticed that the Wang functionality was merged into the terrain tool a couple releases ago, and the combination is definitely a vast improvement! I’ve been playing around with it a bit, and here are some obscure snags I’ve run across. I intend this not as criticism, but as a list of weird stuff people might try to do in practice. 🙂

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**One:** It’s not possible to draw a single unconnected tile. This is no big surprise, as there is no way to assign a color to the _center_ of a tile. And it makes sense for the original design of the terrain tool, which was for transitions between different terrain on a top-down map. But for a platformer, where most terrain is interested in transitioning to empty space, single tiles make perfect sense.

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**Two:** I don’t know if there’s a way to enforce decorative edging when transitioning to empty space. I have a blob set of dirt tiles, with grassy bits along the top edges, assigned like so:

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/c/c6fe1a9551437cf05c4a457c0bb5c6d0c3ec4978.png)

If I draw with the green terrain, I can make a row of connected blocks, but of course nothing taller than that. If I try to draw with the red terrain, I get some odd suggestions:

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/1/1ef63566e1d6691a8bc9a0bc5d295af0fb154715.png) ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/b/b734bf7473de8b515ea7d735bb5a48f33546ab47.png)

It will never propose two _connected_ grass tops, nor propose the grass itself. I was expecting something like this:

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/5/581badc2153f472eb808bdd9f9572fd37fc1d4cb.png)

I also can’t draw the dirt version of these tiles and then use the terrain tool to place the grass on top:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/a/ad67dd8b5a7592365bc091dab8411920edac98f8.png)

I don’t have grassy-topped versions of _every_ possible open-topped tile, so some arrangements really are impossible to satisfy (which has been a problem with my automap rules for this, too). But this seems fairly straightforward, so I’m confused as to what’s going wrong. My best guess is that empty space is special-cased to only work when there’s a single terrain in a set?

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**Three:** I tried out an arrangement of generic non-trademarked plastic building bricks, like so:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/a/ad599d4654f7cf2fa4c0cbf74b60b26837b1574d.png)

There are no top and bottom edges marked because there’s a seam there, so any tile can go with any other tile. (It could be nice to prevent two blocks of the same color from touching, but I can’t see any way to encode that without allowing an edge to be multiple colors.)

The terrain tool seems to get a little confused about this. If I drag from left to right, I sometimes get broken bricks:

![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/7/7888b9e9d6853c11555a0119d5bedb075d007d0d.png)

I’m _guessing_ what’s happening here is that the middle block was previously red, and I’m trying to place more red as tile 4, but there is no red/red tile, so Tiled has to change tile 3. It randomly picks blue/red, but that would make tile 2 be blue/blue, which doesn’t exist, so it has to change _that_, randomly picks yellow/blue, and refuses to go any further away from the cursor.

That makes sense. But I don’t specifically want to place red; I just want to place _something_. I thought that was the general idea behind Wang tiles, but I don’t think there’s a way to draw “any terrain in this set”.

If tiles’ centers could be colored, I could assign the center of all of these tiles to a fifth color (white?), and then draw with that as a workaround.

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**Four:** Similarly, floodfilling or shape drawing with this non-Lego set has curious results:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/7/7b37672b23273167eeaaf694585f2a117f234bb4.png)

Not quite what I had in mind. 🙂

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**Five:** I do also have some decorative top-edge tiles for this set, but the correct one to use depends on the edge colors _and_ the color of the brick below, and I have no idea how I could possibly encode that. A correct arrangement would look like this:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/mapeditor/original/2X/c/c362cc180f719c091ec560e285c35fd47404eced.png)

I can make automap rules for this easily enough, of course, but those can’t erase decor that’s no longer necessary.

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**Six:** Oh, and I’d love an “edit tileset” button or similar for the map’s terrain list, similar to the tile grid!

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**Author:** ![eevee](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.mapeditor.org/eevee/32/1074_2.png) [@eevee](https://discourse.mapeditor.org/u/eevee)\
**Post date:** [August 10, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://discourse.mapeditor.org/t/terrain-tool-feedback-round-three/5232/2 "2021-08-10T23:19:49Z")

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Ah, I’ve made another terrain with decorative edging, but this time with all eight corners + edges available, and it seems to work fine. Interesting!