Tilemap quality-of-life changes

We're about to start creating levels for our game and there are a few additions to the Tilemap object that would be immensely helpful to anyone creating maps

• Picking tiles from the layout. Something like shift+click to pick the tile your cursor is currently on, and combining with click+drag to pick an area of tiles, so I can pick sections that I have created with tiles and copy them

• Tilemap zoom. We're using 8x8 tiles, and it can get pretty pretty annoying picking tiles, specially with the overlay with the tile number and the cursor in the way. It would help a lot if there was a 2x zoom option

[attachment=1:2puevbp8][/attachment:2puevbp8]

• The Rectangle Tile Tool repeats what's in the center and surrounds it with the surrounding tiles (top row of the image below)

It would be nice to have something like a "Repeat Rectangle Tool" that would repeat the entire selected area (bottom row in the image below)

[attachment=0:2puevbp8][/attachment:2puevbp8]

Thanks a lot

- Tilemap zoom. We're using 8x8 tiles, and it can get pretty pretty annoying picking tiles, specially with the overlay with the tile number and the cursor in the way. It would help a lot if there was a 2x zoom option

i would love to have this too, either with very small and big tiles its a pain in the ass to work with the tilemap object

for example on my 12" Thinkpad the small tiles i can barely see while 256*256 tiles are much to big in the editor

This is one reason why I use Tiled, and just import the maps.

One thing though that I'd like is the ability to clear the entire space of the tilemap, maybe with a dialog that asks if you're sure if you want to, since the only way to clear the entire map is one tile at a time.

...since the only way to clear the entire map is one tile at a time.

you can also use the eraser and select a huge range of tiles, but your idea of erasing everything with a click is very good and im sure its easy too implement!

How do you select them?

just click and hold the mousebutton while you drag the mouse cursor down and to the side, sorry for humble english but i hope you understand what i mean

btw this way you can also draw multiple tiles at once with the "pencil" tool

Doesn't work. just erases 1 tile no matter which tool I use whether its left or right button I press.. just one is erased.

I'm not talking about drawing a line.. I'm talking about removing a section like the box tool, but erasing rather than inserting.

Prominent If you have a tileset with more than 1 tile, you can select the erase tool, then left click + drag over your tiles (as if you were selecting multiple) to increase the size of the eraser. The max eraser/selection size is that of your tilemap.

Anyway, I fully support these additions. Namely picking up already-placed tiles from the canvas. That one is absolutely necessary if you plan on making any real maps, and has been requested a number of times already.

Tokinsom , oh okay, figured it out now. Thanks!

Ashley would it be hard for you to implement these features ('zoom in the tilemapbar' and 'delete all tiles on map') for the tilemap object?

Why dont you use http://www.mapeditor.org ? It does everything that you are looking

C2 supports TMX to import tiles from this program

Joannesalfa Because C2's tilemap already does most of the same things minus these seemingly simple & common features (well, some of them). I'm not going to use an entirely different program just for a few more features..that would just negate the work Ashley has already put into the tilemap object.

Also I once used Tiled (via TMX Importer) with sprite objects acting as tiles (as Ashley and everyone else suggested) and ended up having to cancel the game because of the insanely slow preview/export/commit/update times, freezing when loading maps, difficulty managing tilesets, and tons of memory use. (It was that or re-building every single level in C2 and refactoring just about every object) You can't really load .tmx tiles into C2 tilemaps at runtime either due to the 1-tilemap-per-object design. That said, I strongly advise devs to NOT use Tiled with C2.

Hey Ashley can we please get an official statement on these features? In my opinion only the first feature (picking already-placed tiles from the layout) is truly necessary as it sort of makes the other two redundant: Once you've placed some tiles you can zoom in on the layout instead, making it easier to view & pick tiles, and patterns / tile groups can be picked up and placed elsewhere to create larger and more elaborate patterns instead of adding more functionality to the rectangle tool.

I know we can import .tmx files into the tilemaps but that's not very practical. Not only is it an awful workflow but it negates much of the work you've already put into the tilemap object. Just a few more features (or the one, really) and we won't have to rely on other software to get the job done

TMX_importer by RexRainbow will import tmx files at runtime, I am using it and it works nicely.

helena

Also I once used Tiled (via TMX Importer) with sprite objects acting as tiles (as Ashley and everyone else suggested) and ended up having to cancel the game because of the insanely slow preview/export/commit/update times, freezing when loading maps, difficulty managing tilesets, and tons of memory use. (It was that or re-building every single level in C2 and refactoring just about every object) You can't really load .tmx tiles into C2 tilemaps at runtime either due to the 1-tilemap-per-object design. That said, I strongly advise devs to NOT use Tiled with C2.