Tilesets

A tileset turns an image into the tiles you paint with: the import dialog slices the image into a grid of tiles, and the palette in the Tile Map panel shows them to choose from. Tilesets can also be flat colors, for blocking out a map before you have artwork. This page covers importing a tile sheet, the palette, color tilesets, tile properties, animations and collision shapes, and preparing hex tiles with Hexy Forge.

Import a tile sheet

1. Start editing a map: select its entity, or pick it in the Tile Map panel.
2. Click Import tileset image next to Tilesets in the Tile Map panel, or choose Assets › Import tileset….
3. Choose the Image: pick one of the project's images from the list, or click Browse for a PNG, JPEG, WebP or BMP file anywhere on disk.
4. Check the Name. It starts as the file's name.
5. Set the Slicing until the grid in the preview lines up with your tiles.
6. Click Import tileset.

Slicing a sheet of hex tiles. The grid overlay shows each tile the slicing finds.

Setting	Meaning
Tile width, Tile height	The size of one tile in pixels. They start as the map's cell size.
Margin	Empty pixels around the edge of the image
Spacing	Empty pixels between tiles

The summary under the fields reads, for example, 4 columns × 3 rows = 12 tiles. Tiles may be larger than the map's cells: they are anchored at the bottom center of their cell, so a tree or mountain taller than the cell overlaps the row above, as in Hexy.

The new tileset is added to the map and selected in the palette. Adding it is one undo step. When you save the map, the image is stored inside the .hexy file with the map, so the map keeps working if the original file moves. Editing the original image afterwards does not change the map's copy; import the image again as a new tileset to use the new artwork.

Prepare hex tiles with Hexy Forge

Hexy Forge, Hexy's image preparation suite, cuts textures into hexagon tiles and packs them into tile sheets. Its Tile Sheet workspace shows a Hexy import settings card with the values the sheet needs:

1. In Hexy Forge, pack your tiles into a sheet and export it as a PNG into the project's assets folder.
2. Click the copy button on the Hexy import settings card.
3. In Talesmith's import dialog, choose the sheet and click Paste settings in the Made with Hexy Forge? box.

The editor fills in the tile size, margin and spacing from the pasted text and checks the image against it: Matches the Hexy Forge sheet: 4 columns, or a warning when the image does not match.

The palette

The Tiles tab of the Tile Map panel shows the tiles of the tileset chosen in the picker above it. The picker lists every tileset of the map with its tile count and size, such as Island terrain · 12 tiles · 128×148.

Do	How
Paint with a tile	Click it. The Brush becomes active, unless the active tool already paints tiles, such as Fill or Rectangle.
Paint with a random mix	Ctrl+click several tiles. The Random Brush becomes active and picks among them by weight.
Make a stamp from part of the sheet	Drag a rectangle over the tiles of an image tileset. The Stamp tool becomes active with those tiles in their arrangement.
Edit a tile	Double-click it. See Tile properties.
Make the tiles bigger or smaller	The slider next to the search box
Find tiles	Type in Filter by name, id or property

The filter matches a tile's id (12 or #12), its name, or the name or value of one of its properties. Several words must all match, so water deep finds the tiles whose name or properties contain both. Hover a tile to see its name, id, whether it is animated or has collision shapes, and its properties.

The ⋯ menu next to Tilesets has Tile properties… for the selected tile, Add color tile and Remove tileset. Removing a tileset also removes every tile painted with it and the terrains built from it, after asking; you can undo it.

Color tilesets

Click New color tileset (the + next to Tilesets) to add a tileset of flat colors, sized to the map's cells. It starts with one color; ⋯ › Add color tile adds more, and double-clicking a color tile lets you change its color. Maps made with GameObject › New tile map… can start with a 16-color terrain palette: deep water, water, shallows, sand, grass, meadow, forest, jungle, hills, mountain, peak, snow, desert, swamp, lava and road.

Color tiles are useful for blocking out a level, for collision layers you do not want to draw, and for maps where the tiles are data rather than pictures.

Tile properties

Double-click a tile in the palette to open Tile properties.

A plank tile with a oneWay property and a collision shape covering only the plank.

Field	What it does
Name	A name for the tile, shown in tooltips and the tool options bar, and searchable in the palette
Color	With Use a color ticked, color tiles are drawn in this color. Image tiles fall back to it when their artwork is missing.
Custom properties	Named values your game reads, such as solid, oneWay or damage. Click +, type a name and choose the type: String, Int, Float, Bool, Color or File.
Animation	Frames the tile cycles through
Collision	Shapes that replace the full cell on collision layers

Click Save tile to apply the changes as one undo step.

Animated tiles

Choose Animation, then click tiles in the strip below to add them as frames. Each frame has a duration in milliseconds; a new frame copies the duration of the last one, or 120 ms for the first. The preview plays the animation. Animated tiles play in the editor's Preview and in the game, for water, torches and flags.

Collision shapes

On a collision layer, a tile without shapes makes its whole cell solid. Draw shapes to make only part of it solid, such as a slope, a thin plank or the trunk of a tree:

• Click to add points; double-click or press Enter to finish a shape.
• Drag a point to move it, right-click it to remove it.
• Points snap to whole pixels; hold Ctrl to snap to the cell's corners and the middles of its edges.
• Whole cell adds a shape covering the cell; Clear removes all shapes.

The shapes turn and flip with the tile when you paint it rotated. In the .hexy file they are stored as the tile property collision, which Hexy keeps unchanged.

Properties of the map

The Properties tab of the Tile Map panel edits properties of the map itself: a Background color and custom properties, such as a level's name or music. When an object is selected with the Objects tool, the tab also shows the object; see Collision and map objects.

Related

• Painting tools
• Terrains and auto-tiling
• Tile maps from scripts, for reading tile properties in your game.