Tilemap Editor Discuss: RMMV & Tiled Map Editor

[Dr.Yami]

I have used both before, and feel both are missing something for development.

What do you think about both of them? What is missing? What is needed to be improved?

 

[Poryg]

I've never used tiled, so cannot speak for that. However, for MV I have a couple of points.
1. the shift mode is nice, but I really hate that it doesn't remember the shift mode once I use a normal tile instead.
2. Allowing off-grid placement and custom grid size would also be great. It creates some issues with drawing tiles in the engine, I know, but I'm sure these can be worked out.
3. Instead of just having A1-A5 and B-E limited to just nine files in total I'd prefer B-E to be completely modular, in other words choose the amount of files yourself.

But in the end nothing beats parallax mapping in terms of customizability... Except MV is not really built for parallax mapping.

 

[Isabella Ava]

RPGMV - it can Undo but cannot Redo - @.@ ??? really!?

 

[Archeia]

The only thing tiled is missing is rpg maker autotile support and the eventing system itself.

 

[Conflictx3]

i remember using rpg maker 2003 (my first RM) and not having too muhc problem making maps, but then i got XP which had TWO layers for mapping + the event tiles, at first i was like "WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH THIS POINTLESS MID-LAYER?!" but ended up making my best maps on XP

i never had VX but now that i have MV and seeing its back to RM2k3 style with just ONE map layer and the event layer i feel super limited.

long story short, bring back additional map layers please!

 

[Andar]

Several of the wishes so far have disadvantages as well as improvements - after all there were reasons why the map editor was changed over the time like this. For example parallax maps require around three thousand times the RAM of regular maps, and that causes problems on mobiles and low-end computers.

So instead of a wish of what might be nice, I'm limiting myself to things that might realistically be added without causing to much trouble for the existing engine.

What would really help a lot would be a saveable "working area" linked to the tileset outside of regular maps. This would not become part of the deployed project as it would only be used by the editor.
The idea is to be able to store combinations of tiles for copying.
At the moment (and especially with shift-click-mapping) you'll need to use a small part of the map to construct sequences to copy. And this would basically be overwritten whenever the map is finished, requiring you to do it again on the next map. Having such structures saved outside the map would help a lot - and you would also be able to store more complex structures there for copying, for example if your game has large magic gate circles (5x5 tiles or even larger) everywhere you would only do them once in the tileset working area and then copy it to whatever map with that tileset they will be used on.

This working area would be like a smaller map window open at the same time like the main map editor, allowing copying from and to it at need.
Ideally it might even be able to store events for quick copying...

 

[Sharm]

It's been a long time since I used TileD, so some of this may have been fixed, but I remember that if you changed the source file, updating the images in a map was a pain. I've also never gotten the hang of the ways to get auto tiling to work, I wish there were a few standards you could choose from and just point to a tile and say "this is done XP style" or "this is done Ace style". Speaking of Ace style, if you ever wanted to do sub-tiles you had to put the whole thing at half the tile size from the start, which meant that even though most things would still be the normal tile size, you would need to place each and every one as if they were four tiles. Got annoying. Also, due to the number of layers you could easily have, I would often end up with just loads of them and wanting to compress it down a bit. Doing so meant carefully remapping each thing then erasing it and got pretty confusing, I wish there was a way to select things and just cut and paste them into a different layer. Maybe that's just a holdover from me working in art programs, but I would like it. I really like the layers. The way it treated source files got a little confusing to me, often times I would start mapping something, realize I wanted to organize things a little differently or add something to a sheet and I would almost have to start over to get things sorted on the TileD file. Basically, I like to start disorganized and organize as I go, and TileD would basically require organization first to work well, but didn't force it on you. I felt a bit like I was tricked into thinking my method would work and found out later how wrong I was. RM forces the issue by limiting layers and source files, which is both a good and a bad thing in that regard.

As for RM's side, I started a thread just to talk about it. I said a huge amount on the subject there, and there were some excellent points made, so it's worth a read if you're interested in this stuff, I think.

 

[Arcmagik]

I agree with @Archeia though I find with the autotile conversion plugin the autotiles become mostly a non-issue.

 

[Dr.Yami]

Thank you for all of your opinions. In my opinion, Tiled is kinda flexible to the extend that would be overwhelm, especially in managing and organizing.

Parallax mapping is kind good and fancy; however, it comes with some costs, and memory problem is one of them (both storage size and RAM). I would do tilemap for most of scenes, and mix some parallax layers to some important scenes though.

 

[Kes]

I've moved this thread to Product Discussion and Support. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[djDarkX]

The only thing tiled is missing is rpg maker autotile support and the eventing system itself.

This is exactly my thoughts on this. It makes it a bit more tedious to work on an MV map in Tiled with knowing where the events are or how they will move to specific spots with move events. Autotile is something I can, personally, do without, but it's still a very useful feature. If the Tiled editor could be merged with MV, or the next iteration of the RM series, assuming there is one, then the editor would be leaps and bounds better, with the same abilities to add animations and as many layers as the map would require.

 

[Archeia]

This is exactly my thoughts on this. It makes it a bit more tedious to work on an MV map in Tiled with knowing where the events are or how they will move to specific spots with move events. Autotile is something I can, personally, do without, but it's still a very useful feature. If the Tiled editor could be merged with MV, or the next iteration of the RM series, assuming there is one, then the editor would be leaps and bounds better, with the same abilities to add animations and as many layers as the map would require.

I export them as parallax images and then blow them up at 150% size. It's not that painful for me at least.

 

[jonthefox]

the biggest thing for me is that i hate how when i shift click tiles in, and then put new tiles adjacent to them, they automatically change back and all my shift click work is lost.

 

[PitjePitjePitje]

@jonthefox an ability to 'lock' graphics on a tile-basis like you're able to lock photoshop layers would be super useful. You could lock a tile to work on the surrounding area, not lose all that shift-clicked goodness, then unlock the tile if you decide it needs some more decoration after all, then lock all the area's that are 'done' again. Personally I would love a feature like that.

 

[Dankovsky]

I only used Tiled for a bit but my concerns were...

1) No RPGM autotile support
2) Not too easy to set up and implement, even with many guides
3) You don't see the map in the editor, which would make eventing a huge pain
4) Extra work for passability

Considering these points I've decided using Tiled is too much work for too little gain, especially since most of its advantages can be simulated with much simpler Yanfly Doodads.

I'd love for someone to prove me wrong because I'd like to consider giving it another shot.

Regarding MV editor, the things I think must be done:
1) Option to use more layers
2) Unlimited tilesets as an option (YES)
3) Ability to add objects off-the-grid or on a smaller grid (like Doodads)