I’ve been creating a 2D game in Unity. I’ve been composing the ground using Quad objects, each with a Mesh filter. By changing the tiling on the material, I can make the texture repeat in tiles. The problem with this is that different block sizes each require a different material and in turn another game object prefab. It also means worrying about how many collider objects I have for smaller ground objects.
I have heard that tile maps may be a solution to this problem. Furthermore, they might allow me to “paint” the scene with tiles rather than dragging game objects and locking them into place with the V button. However, I am not sure as to what kind of solution I should use or follow.
This tool will allow tile maps produced by the Tiled editor to be converted to an object that can be dragged into a Unity scene: Get Tiled2Unity. However, this means using the Tiled editor for a lot of scene editing, which in my opinion breaks the workflow a bit.
There is of course the asset store, though I’m not sure which items are worth the money for their quality. Someone had recommended the one at https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/908, though it is expensive. I also wasn’t sure if maybe I needed to get more hands on experience with tile mapping code if I apply at a future game dev job, though finishing a game product may end up being more useful.
if it’s a tilemap editor you want you are welcome to my own editor I have created., it still needs work, but I’m building a gauntlet type game with it and an arkanoid game I have done in native android(java).
piggybank1974, it’d need to support both “painting” the scene with tiles by dragging over an area and holding the mouse button and automatically building a single polygon collider for an entire set of tiles, for me to be able to use it. If it has these features, I could take a look. Thank you for offering a solution.
The editor is a vb.net Winforms program(see pictures) I created its not a plugin for unity, it’s simple to set up, and use you can load the XML files in using code.
I’ve ported some of the code over that displays the tiles from the editor as you can see.
If this does not help you will have to create it on your own.
Well, I wrote my own on an amstrad, then again on the Amiga. I only ended up employing myself. These days if you’re looking for a job, it’s nearly always better to show them a full game you’ve done rather than tools. Because a full game is much more challenging and tests a lot more of you than just array manipulation.
Perhaps its better to focus on making games for now. You can always go back to tile stuff and think “well that’s much easier than I thought” a year later armed with lots of experience. Why struggle when getting started?
Does anyone else think Sprite Tile is pretty good? The 2D Toolkit is $75, while Sprite Tile is $30. Is the extra $45 worth it to buy the 2D Toolkit? Is Sprite Tile sufficient for most purposes? I might use features other than the Tile Map implementation if they are useful.
Talk to @Eric5h5 - he may be able to answer any concerns you have about it directly.
It’s worth noting that tilemaps will be a native feature of Unity 5.5 due in June. Pro users can use it right now, if they don’t mind being slightly behind the latest versions.
The two main features I need for tile maps are the ability to “paint tiles” by clicking in a scene view and dragging the mouse and automatically forming a polygon collider for a set of tiles rather than having one box collider for each. However, other features in the tool kits will affect the decision, too.
I’m not sure I really can wait until June – that’s a long time not to have tile maps in my level designs. $1,500 is pretty expensive for the license, and for the $75 monthly subscription, you have to buy it for a minimum of 12 months, at $900. That’s a bit expensive at the moment.
SpriteTile has the best tilemap engine/editor/API. 2D Toolkit is close behind, and does a whole lot of other things. It depends on what you need. If you’d also like to supercharge your sprites, 2DTK is worth the extra bits, but if a tile-based game with uncomplicated sprites is all you want to make SpriteTile wins. I have both and have different prototypes using either.
your mapping idea shouldn’t be to difficult to do I unity, I’ve only been using unity for a short while but have a go I can post my map loading code and the maps no problem.
In poking around, it looked like Sprite Tile did not have as strong of support or as many tutorials available on the web.
The 2D Toolkit looked like it was better supported and had more tutorials, but it’s expensive. Buying a solution like this creates a startup cost per developer on my project, and this may include non programmers if they want to use the Unity editor. The 2D Toolkit also seemed to have its own versions of a number of components, such as UI components, rather than the standard Unity components. Obviously I might be able to avoid using these, however.
piggybank1974, is your code well documented, ported to Unity 5, and does it support automatic collider creation? These are some of the problems I’ve seen in one-off code solutions recently. I really appreciate your offer for code, though I’ve wound up becoming a little hesitant to borrow code this way because of this.
Since I understand Unity is going to include Tile Maps in its editor in June, I’ve been led to believe the best option for now would be to use the external Tiled program and import most of the scene design with Tiled2Unity. I could then attempt to write (or hopefully borrow) a conversion script in order to convert it to Unity’s new Tilemapping system after June. If I buy a toolkit from the asset store, converting the format through a script will probably not be as feasible of an option, I suspect.
