Tile map

A Tile Map is a component that allows you to assemble, or paint, tiles from a Tile Source onto a large grid area. Tile maps are commonly used to build game level environments. You can also use the Collision Shapes from the tile source in your maps for collision detection and physics simulation (example).

Before you can create a tile map you need to create a Tile Source. Refer to the Tile Source manual to learn how to create a Tile Source.

Creating a tile map

To create a new tile map:

• Right click a location in the Assets browser, then select New... ▸ Tile Map).
• Name the file.

• The new tile map automatically opens in the tile map editor.

  

• Set the Tile Source property to a tile source file that you have prepared.

To paint tiles on your tile map:

1. Select or create a Layer to paint on in the Outline view.

2. Select a tile to use as a brush (press Space to show the tile palette) or select a few tiles by clicking and dragging in the palette to create a rectangle brush with multiple tiles.

   

3. Paint with the selected brush. To erase a tile, either pick an empty tile and use it as brush, or select the eraser (Edit ▸ Select Eraser).

   

You can pick tiles directly from a layer and use the selection as a brush. Hold Shift and click a tile to pick it up as the current brush. While holding Shift you can also click and drag to select a block of tiles to use as a larger brush. Also, it is possible to cut tiles in a similar way by holding Shift+Ctrl or erase them by holding Shift+Alt.

For clockwise brush rotation, use Z. Use X for horizontal flipping and Y for vertical flipping of the brush.

Adding a tile map to your game

To add a tile map to your game:

1. Create a game object to hold the tile map component. The game object can be in a file or created directly in a collection.
2. Right-click the root of the game object and select Add Component File.
3. Select the tile map file.

Runtime manipulation

You can manipulate tilemaps in runtime through a number of different functions and properties (refer to the API docs for usage).

Changing tiles from script

You can read and write the content of a tile map dynamically while your game is running. To do so, use the tilemap.get_tile() and tilemap.set_tile() functions:

local tile = tilemap.get_tile("/level#map", "ground", x, y)

if tile == 2 then
    -- Replace grass-tile (2) with dangerous hole tile (number 4).
    tilemap.set_tile("/level#map", "ground", x, y, 4)
end

Tilemap properties

Apart from the properties Id, Position, Rotation and Scale the following component specific properties exist:

Tile Source

The tilesource resource to use for the tilemap.

Material

The material to use for rendering the tilemap.

Blend Mode

The blend mode to use when rendering the tilemap.

Blend modes

The Blend Mode property defines how the component graphics should be blended with the graphics behind it. These are the available blend modes and how they are calculated:

Alpha

Normal blending: src.a * src.rgb + (1 - src.a) * dst.rgb

Add

Brighten the background with the color values of the corresponding pixels of the component: src.rgb + dst.rgb

Multiply

Darken the background with values of the corresponding pixels of the component: src.rgb * dst.rgb

Screen

Opposite of Multiply. Brighten background and values of the corresponding pixels of the component: src.rgb - dst.rgb * dst.rgb

Changing properties

A tilemap has a number of different properties that can be manipulated using go.get() and go.set():

tile_source

The tile map tile source (hash). You can change this using a tile source resource property and go.set(). Refer to the API reference for an example.

material

The tile map material (hash). You can change this using a material resource property and go.set(). Refer to the API reference for an example.

Material constants

The default tilemap material has the following constants that can be changed using go.set() or go.animate() (refer to the Material manual for more details). Examples:

go.set("#tilemap", "tint", vmath.vector4(1,0,0,1))
go.animate("#tilemap", "tint", go.PLAYBACK_LOOP_PINGPONG, vmath.vector4(1,0,0,1), go.EASING_LINEAR, 2)

tint

The color tint of the tile map (vector4). The vector4 is used to represent the tint with x, y, z, and w corresponding to the red, green, blue and alpha tint.

Project configuration

The game.project file has a few project settings related to tilemaps.

External tools

There are external map/level editors that can export directly to Defold tilemaps:

Tiled

Tiled is a well-known and widely used map editor for orthogonal, isometric and hexagonal maps. Tiled has support for a wide array of features and can export directly to Defold. Learn more about how to export tilemap data and additional meta-data in this blog post by Defold user “goeshard”

Tilesetter

Tilesetter can be used to automatically create full tilesets from simple base tiles and it has a map editor which can export directly to Defold.