• 2D

  • Tilemaps; layers and arranging tilesheets?

Hey there! New to Godot, new to the forums. I hope to be here a lot more, as my intent is to start a game dev company using Godot as our engine of choice.

Any who, my question is this; on Godot's feature page it clearly mentions under "Create 2D games with ease" this...

Tile map editor with auto-tiling, rotation, custom grid shapes and multiple layers. But alas, I can't seem to find or have seen anyone use layers in the Tilemap editor. Is this referring to the fact that you can layer Tilemap Nodes themselves? Is there a prohibitive performance cost associated with doing it this way? My intent was to have give or take 8 layers of tiles to make all the effects I want to happen.

Secondly, is there a way to arrange the tilesheets in the painting menu so that it makes more sense? The tile atlases are unordered in the panel, but in an editor like Tiled your whole tilesheet appears as if you straight up opened the tilesheet in an image viewer. How do you guys usually use it? Is there a way to change how it's displayed? I wouldn't need Tile atlases if I could simply open the tilesheet itself without splitting it into pieces.

I'm just getting started with Godot myself, but I believe the TileMap would be used for the main interactive 2D world. If you want background elements to move (like clouds, mountains, etc.) you would use a Parallax Layer to get that effect (you can have I think as many background layers as you want). If you are talking about the character jumping between layers, that may be more complex. I haven't got that far to know exactly. Also, welcome to the forum!

I have not done very much 2D work in Godot, but it appears the standard practice for multiple layers in Godot is to use multiple TileMap nodes. This GitHub issue/request mentions the need for having multiple layers in a single TileMap node, but it appears right now there is no support for layers in TileMap nodes in Godot currently. I do not know if there is performance limitations for using multiple TileMap nodes.

There is no way to arrange the tiles in the tile painting menu that I know of, but if there is then that would be great, because I have also found it difficult to use the tile map painting. (Side note: Welcome to the forums!)

@cybereality said: I'm just getting started with Godot myself, but I believe the TileMap would be used for the main interactive 2D world. If you want background elements to move (like clouds, mountains, etc.) you would use a Parallax Layer to get that effect (you can have I think as many background layers as you want). Nah, in this case I'm simply trying to create the layers of the world as I intend. Don't need much animation yet! This may be useful later, however. : )

@TwistedTwigleg said: I have not done very much 2D work in Godot, but it appears the standard practice for multiple layers in Godot is to use multiple TileMap nodes. This GitHub issue/request mentions the need for having multiple layers in a single TileMap node, but it appears right now there is no support for layers in TileMap nodes in Godot currently. I do not know if there is performance limitations for using multiple TileMap nodes. Yeah, I had seen that post and for the most part I am in agreement with it. There are some fundamental flaws with the Tilemap system in Godot that Game Maker addresses better, though I'm in love with every other facet of Godot.

@TwistedTwigleg said: There is no way to arrange the tiles in the tile painting menu that I know of, but if there is then that would be great, because I have also found it difficult to use the tile map painting. Eek... hope that changes one day :P

Thanks, guys! I'm figuring it out as I go. c: