I am getting to grips with top-down gameplay using the TopDown Engine. Ultimately I want to create something broadly similar to Stardew Valley: the player and multiple agents navigating an interactive top-down world. (For example, I got an agent to open and walk through a door. Hurrah.) Currently I want to make sure I import pixel-art assets (sourced from OpenGameArt, itch.io, etc) in a usable way.
I was able to paint some 16x16 background tiles by following the Tile Palette tutorial. It didn’t really make sense to me until I used the Sprite Editor to force the cuts as precisely 16x16. It doesn’t give me autotiles, but the results are usable.
When I applied the same logic to buildings and scenery it didn’t work out. I get 16x16 tiles, but the scenery objects are much bigger and the Sprite Editor doesn’t retain their relative position, so putting one together on the tilemap is a lot of work.
I suspect I should be letting the Sprite Editor make smart cuts around the sprites. But when I do this, the underlying tile is still 16x16, so I end up with lots of overlapping sprites in the Tile Palette. Is this normal? Is there a better approach?