Tiled Map Editor

Started using the Tiled Map Editor map editor. you can create all kinds of maps from top down games to side runners. Its pretty easy to get up and running and it is compatible for a large number of game engines out there. I am not going to list them all but the one I have started using Tiled with is Phaser and if you haven't read my post on you can read it here.

first things first and when you have to set up your first project in Tiled there are a couple of settings that cannot be altered once the project is started. The most important is the tile size, know how big they need to be. Changing your mind will mean starting over and depending on how far along you are will cost you some time which is not great if you are working towards a deadline.

I chose to make my tiles 32x32 pixels and my map width 800x640 pixels. Why? Well I wanted my map to be equally divisable by my tiles dimensions. That gives me 26 columns by 20 rows, perfect for starting out. I followed the tutorial on gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com  and it does a great job of explaining how to create your first map using Tiled.

Something I did find was that you can't make a half tile, what's a half tile? The whole tile is either an obstacle or its not, so in my case I was making the walls of my game and wanted to round the corners my player could not move past the half tiles. Grouping tiles onto layers will save you a headache so all the black tiles you see are on my background layer and the grey tiles are on my wall layer.




Ok so I made up a half tile but you get what I mean, right? A tile is either there or it isn't. The rabbit is only for illustration purposes but If you like him you can grab him here! He was not stretched, squashed or harmed in any way during this blog post.