WARNING, RAMBLY BABBLINGS:
This may be somewhat related, but perhaps not. In developing the level editor for our game we designed seeded objects that had their own tile properties. You’d have to, say, right click the object to ‘break apart’ and edit the actual tile set, and then double click off the object to reseal it.
This is not very unlike Photoshop Smart Objects, seeded files within a file.
I believe this could be an approach to look at for solving the above issue without afflicting the core Tiled design.
Essentially, this concept works in Tiled now if you are tenationious. One would have their basic root tile map open, and when needed create a new tiled file that has the different tile set sizes. The objects requiring the differed tile constraints would be exported as images, then placed in the root map as object layers. Editing of the divergent tile properties objects would occur on their own save file, and need to be re-exported to refresh the root map.
Digression:
Concurrently, I’ve been playing around with mapping Fallout76 zones and often think of creating a Tile set to use in Tiled. The engine is fascinating in that all the buildings (or whatever prefab) are constrained to 90 degree angles (top down perspective). This means the floor plan of any set of buildings is an extremely simple tile set, not including 45s, or anything more. Just the good ol’ 90 degree concave and vex tiles accommodate this.
The stacking of these within the 3d world is where a layer of complication obfuscates the design restraint from the player. Essentially seeded tile based objects are place on another tiled grid. The seeded objects seem to snap to 30, 60, and 90 degrees I haven’t 100% confirmed this, may more likely be 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5, 90 etc…
Personal Tenat of game design: Stack simple design system over simple design system until conveyence of convincing fantastical reality is adequately achieved. This allows for tenable production without sacrificing product quality.
I’ve thought of submitting a suggestion to the forums of allowing object placing to include other Tile maps. Once these other tile maps are imported as objects, they are no longer constrained to the rules of the root map. They can be rotated, and placed, requiring the object layer only needs an anchor point to map, the source reference, and the rotation property (if any). Editing the seeded Tiled Map wouldn’t occure in the root map, you’d have to open the source for the seed and edit it there; streamlining the user interface, reducing complication for use as well as Tiled application.
If this method is a bit too complex, or even impossible for tiled, I believe perhaps an easier route would be as mentioned above, but removing the user friction.
Allow placement of other Tiled maps within Tiled map, but as image only. The process for tiled would be to open the selected map (behind the scenes), export it as a png, create/make pallet of exported image as an object (adding this image to the ‘root’ Tile folder to reference). The user can update these objects as needed, and would have to be responsible for any mayhem larger (once tile maps) images as objects might wreak.
