Introduction to tile Studio

When creating a small 2D game, one of the many problems that game planners face is map editing, which includes map splicing and game level design. If it is a very simple map, you can directly write it in the form of an arrayProgramCodeHowever, when you encounter a slightly complex map, the application of the map editor will greatly simplify the workload and work difficulty.

For mobile games, the vast majority of games are currently 2D, and in these 2D games, due to mobile phone capacity restrictions, the vast majority of game images are achieved by splicing small pieces of elements (this can effectively reduce the size of the game ). Map spelling is the work of planners. This requires a convenient and practical tool to combine the elements provided by the artist with the fastest speed into available game resources.

Introduction to tile Studio

Tile studio is an outstanding map editor. It has two main functions: Element creation and map combination. The former allows you to create elements from scratch. This function is mainly intended for artists, but generally domestic artists tend to use Photoshop, in addition, game planners do not have to draw their own elements (if they are individual game developers, they still need to know about them). Therefore, this function is not described too much. The latter is the focus of this article.

Tile Studio supports the size of each element, from 8*8 to 64*64, smaller than or greater than this number. Although it also supports, the program efficiency will be much lower.

It should be noted that the software cannot make a complete game. To make a game, the program personnel must cooperate. At the same time, an interface is required between tile Studio and the game program so that what you see in the map editor can be completely restored to the game screen.

Tile studio menu

The figure is the main interface of tile studio, and the two buttons shown in the red circle are used to switch the mode. The former is the drawing mode, and the latter is the puzzle mode.

The drawing mode is similar to the simplified version of Photoshop. The left side is the toolbar and the right side is the color picker.

As shown in the following figure. The red circle shows two buttons: new tile set and new map. Tile set refers to the same group of elements. Each game may need to use different groups of elements, such as cities, mountain roads, and snow. Therefore, multiple groups of elements need to be imported; map refers to the use of different maps of the same group of elements. For example, the use of cave elements can have multiple maps, such as cave 1 and cave 2. As shown in the Blue Circle in the figure, the labels of tiles and map can be switched between different group elements or maps. In terms of logical relationships, tiles is greater than map, and the latter is included in the former.

The green circle shows the tools available in the puzzle mode.

Pencil tools: when using a pencil tool, you can draw the currently selected image elements into a map, different from other software Painting each layer, this software draws images to three layers at the same time.

Select a tool to select a large area. Then, press del to delete all the selected content. Right-click the selected content to cancel the selected content. Then, press copy, you can copy the current content to the clipboard for future use.

The Unit property settings panel is shown in. The square above is used to set whether the unit is accessible. The horizontal line on the square indicates whether the cell is accessible in this direction. These directions include top, bottom, left, and right, and \,/.

The 00 below is the cell code, which can be used to set the cell event. In combination with the program, you can set various event triggers. The Cell Code ranges from 1 to 255, and The hexadecimal format is displayed on the map, which saves storage space. Therefore, the display on the map is from 01-ff.

The figure above shows the final effect. The three layers below are the first, second, and third layers. The first layer is sand, the second layer is grass, and the third layer is leaf. There are two more items in the end. 08 refers to the code of the cell, and the White horizontal line refers to the unavailability of the cell. The bottom "H", "V", and "R" are the current element blocks used for "Horizontal flip", "vertical flip", and "90-degree flip" respectively.

How to import Elements

Press F4 to import the elements into the editor. tile Studio supports two formats of image elements: BMP and PNG. The following dialog box is displayed:

This dialog box defines the format of the imported elements. You do not need to know much about the functions. tile width and tile height define the length and width of each element, in the figure 16, each small element is 16*16 pixels. Transparent color is used to define the transparent color of an element. First, click the box on the right of the text, and then click the transparent color in the element. After setting is complete, click the import button, and there is an auto-detect on the right. This is automatically set by the program and is generally of little use.