Looking for a 2D tile / sprite tools for a top down survival / crafting / adventure style game

Unity Engine
1

So I am looking to make a 2D top down survival / crafting / adventure game. From a visual idea, something very similar to Forsaken Isle:

1920×1080 725 KB

(for more screenshots: Steam Community :: Forsaken Isle)

While I can paint maps like this manually, that process is very slow and not helpful towards some of the features that I would want to do. Some of the core features that I am looking to implement for this game that ideally a tile / sprite manager would be able to either do out of the box or at least help me with would be:

  1. Procedurally generating maps / “dungeons” that can be persisted in the game save file (the main map levels) or be one use maps (for stuff like “dungeons”, a.k.a Diablo 3 Rifts / PoE Maps).
  2. With part of this game being about crafting include building structures, planting crops, cutting down trees, mining rocks, etc., the maps need to be editable by the user (which is why being able to save the main map levels in a save file or such is critical).
  3. Be able to modified the map through code / events (for example, having a tree grow back after X amount of time after it was cut and such).
  4. Should be able to support animated tiles (for stuff like moving water, flower swaying, etc.)
  5. Needs to be able to support very large maps so something smart enough to know it does not need render map tiles that are several screens away.

While apparently Unity is working on sprite manager type features, no clue when those are ever going to make the light of day so as I have been searching, these are the options seems to come up more often which are:

Super Tile Editor (Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making)
Tile Tool 2D (Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making)
SpriteTile (Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making)
2D Tilezone Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making)

Right now I am leaning towards Super Tile Editor but want to get some input from the community before I make a decision. Do any of these tools support all the features I am looking for? Would anyone who has used any of these tools make any recommendations on which one to get or which ones to avoid for the game I am looking to build (they all seem pretty well rated in the assets store)?

2

As a selfish plug I would say my MLE(multi Level Editor) but as it’s not commercial yet, and it’s free Eric on the form has a nice one, but you could use tiled it’s free. there is a program that will covert tiled to unity easily, Google both, without an editor it will be painful to do what you want.

3

SpriteTile. :wink: Procedural generation, check. Saving/loading user-edited levels, check. Modify the map through code, check. Animated tiles, check. Very large maps, check.

Generally Tiled won’t do what you want; the free importer I saw just makes a static mesh from the level. (SpriteTile will import Tiled maps though, so you can convert them to a more usable form that way.)

–Eric

4

I’ve been trying to workout some of this for my Editor, Eric does yours create the meta file for you, if so care to share the format with me :slight_smile:

I post ed here a while back a little .net program that can rename the sprite for you and copy this back to unity but I wanted to do it when I create he map advice would be great.

5

Not quite sure what you mean by meta file.

–Eric

6

Make sure you can see hidden files, in your resources folder, for multiple sprites all the data for these sprites is in a .meta file of the same name as the image file, I wrote the program to change this files names that are in there, I really would like to do this from my own editor, it uses the crazy XAML format, but I’ unsure about this format.

7

I didn’t do anything like that; you don’t need meta files to get multiple sprite info.

–Eric

8

err the meta file(this is where it’s stored) is the sprite data, positions etc and the name of the sprite itself, delete it and you will find out.

9

Yeah, I really don’t use the meta files for anything; they don’t have any relevant info that you can’t get through normal methods.

–Eric

10

Eric5h5, would there be any way to get hold of the documentation before buying as it help me determine the functionality supported, what is, and how, exposed through the API, and such.

11

Sure, it’s linked to on my SpriteTile page.

–Eric