6 ms·

Tile Studio: development utility for graphics of tile-based games

80 points by cheiVia0 10y ago

ivan_ah 10y ago
See also http://www.mapeditor.org/ http://www.mapeditor.org/ which is another good software in that space.
- slimsag 10y ago
  Having used this software, it's super nice and easy to use / bring into a custom engine if needed.
- B0073D 10y ago
  Honestly this one appears to be the best option in this space currently. Regular updates and upgrades too.
- TheGRS 10y ago
  Yea my first thought was "is this any better/worse than Tiled?" If you are a Unity user you should also check out Tiled 2 Unity: http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity
  - bitJericho 10y ago
    I maintain a library for Tiled in the Monkey X language. https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled
coldcode 10y ago
Is that correct: September 26, 2012 last update?
- pyb 10y ago
  If it ain't broke, don't fix it
  - reflexive 10y ago
    If i̶t̶ ̶a̶i̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶ it's on Sourceforge, don't fix it
triptych 10y ago
He also worked on this http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5.html http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_C...
tarr11 10y ago
I wish there was strong, open source html5 tile editor
- brod 10y ago
  There's a guy who remade pokemon (yellow) in the browser and also a tile editor for it I forget who but it was pretty slick. I think he was a designer.
- myfonj 10y ago
  I think that one could possible evolve from http://www.piskelapp.com/ http://www.piskelapp.com/ in near future; piskel already has a simple "Seamless drawing mode" option and developer seems to be open for ideas.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
...But is it better than Tiled and Aseprite?
wyqydsyq 10y ago
It boggles me that a project hosted on SourceForge that hasn't been updated in 3 years and is in no way relevant lands on the front page of Hacker News...
- poisonarena 10y ago
  so I take it your not going to use this with your DarkBASIC projects ?
- fit2rule 10y ago
  This is of great interest to me, because I have been meaning to do a small project with Lazarus, and this open source project is written in Delphi, so it may be a viable contender for the lab-bench project I'd been planning ..
- berntb 10y ago
  I upvote lots of articles for the comments, to keep a reference. (A good way to find the best open source product for X in the world is probably to post a link to a bad product for X here.)
poisonarena 10y ago
I always use pyxeledit, cheap, professional, and works on mac and PC, and great for animations pyxeledit.com/
- veli_joza 10y ago
  PyxelEdit is really good for creating graphics (sprites and spritesheets). It's so simple and intuitive, makes it easy to focus on art and stay creative. It can be used for making maps, but it's hard to compete with TilEd, which supports hex maps, vector zones for triggers and other meta-data.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Nice. Works on the Mac via Wine.
j_s 10y ago
Related 2D art tool on HN 3 years ago: Sprite Lamp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691 edit: semi-freshly re-written in C++ according to the blog
m48 10y ago
I was always under the impression this program was a level editor made primarily for use with for the author's Clean Game Library [1], a game engine for a functional programming language named Clean [2]. I haven't used either, but maybe people into functional programming will be interested in studying a working game engine made in a functional programming language back in 1999? [3] As for interesting features the program offers on its own… it has a pretty decent integrated graphic editor for tilemaps [4], and uses a template language for defining the output format instead of providing a generic parsable file format [5]. It also appears to abstract away layers by making each tile in your map consist of a "front," "middle," and "back" tile [6]. In general, it seems like a more old-school version of Tiled, and may be useful for people developing for/on older systems that want a very lightweight tilemap editor. For people used to programs like Tiled, though, there's probably no compelling reason to switch to this tool. The lack of a working undo function in the map editor could be a dealbreaker, for one. [1] http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php [2] http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean [3] http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/ http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/ [4] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html [5] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD [6] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor
rtpg 10y ago
I remember watching Notch do a ludum dare and actually use paint.NET as his level editor. Each color can be set to a tile, and you can read in the bitmap easily to load a level. A fun way to quickly crank out maps.
- realharo 10y ago
  Similarly, I once made a game with vector-based levels and just used Inkscape as the editor.
  - veli_joza 10y ago
    This might be the perfect application of Inkscape. As programmer, you can edit XML model and add data to your objects. You can also write Python plugins to integrate into your asset pipeline. I used it to draw art which was converted to bitmaps, define polygon shapes for Box2D bodies, define joints between shapes (rope/spring/hinge), select static/dynamic properties, assign mass/restitution/friction...
astannard 10y ago
I have little trust in anything from SourceForge, it may look good but it's tainted by being on SourceForge so I wont touch it. Sorry
- cheiVia0 10y ago
  https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut... https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
  - astannard 10y ago
    Thanks for the link, I am glad they are turning it around.
coderjames 10y ago
I use Tile Studio as my only sprite and map editor for 2D platformer development (first in C, then C++, now Lua/Love). The ability to define my own output format instead of having to deal with somebody else's XML is a killer feature for me - a primary reason I've previously tried and discarded Tiled.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  You can define your own output format? Hot damn, I'm sold. It took a long time to get Tiled parsed, especially since I needed additional features it didn't have. And that was years ago, so I wasn't looking forward to going through that process again. I wish more software in general allowed you to freely define your output format.

80 points by cheiVia0 10y ago

ivan_ah 10y ago

See also http://www.mapeditor.org/ http://www.mapeditor.org/ which is another good software in that space.

slimsag 10y ago
Having used this software, it's super nice and easy to use / bring into a custom engine if needed.
B0073D 10y ago
Honestly this one appears to be the best option in this space currently. Regular updates and upgrades too.
TheGRS 10y ago
Yea my first thought was "is this any better/worse than Tiled?" If you are a Unity user you should also check out Tiled 2 Unity: http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity
- bitJericho 10y ago
  I maintain a library for Tiled in the Monkey X language. https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled

coldcode 10y ago

Is that correct: September 26, 2012 last update?

pyb 10y ago
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
- reflexive 10y ago
  If i̶t̶ ̶a̶i̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶ it's on Sourceforge, don't fix it

triptych 10y ago

He also worked on this http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5.html http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_C...

tarr11 10y ago

I wish there was strong, open source html5 tile editor

brod 10y ago
There's a guy who remade pokemon (yellow) in the browser and also a tile editor for it I forget who but it was pretty slick. I think he was a designer.
myfonj 10y ago
I think that one could possible evolve from http://www.piskelapp.com/ http://www.piskelapp.com/ in near future; piskel already has a simple "Seamless drawing mode" option and developer seems to be open for ideas.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

...But is it better than Tiled and Aseprite?

wyqydsyq 10y ago

It boggles me that a project hosted on SourceForge that hasn't been updated in 3 years and is in no way relevant lands on the front page of Hacker News...

poisonarena 10y ago
so I take it your not going to use this with your DarkBASIC projects ?
fit2rule 10y ago
This is of great interest to me, because I have been meaning to do a small project with Lazarus, and this open source project is written in Delphi, so it may be a viable contender for the lab-bench project I'd been planning ..
berntb 10y ago
I upvote lots of articles for the comments, to keep a reference. (A good way to find the best open source product for X in the world is probably to post a link to a bad product for X here.)

poisonarena 10y ago

I always use pyxeledit, cheap, professional, and works on mac and PC, and great for animations pyxeledit.com/

veli_joza 10y ago
PyxelEdit is really good for creating graphics (sprites and spritesheets). It's so simple and intuitive, makes it easy to focus on art and stay creative. It can be used for making maps, but it's hard to compete with TilEd, which supports hex maps, vector zones for triggers and other meta-data.

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Nice. Works on the Mac via Wine.

j_s 10y ago

Related 2D art tool on HN 3 years ago: Sprite Lamp https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691 edit: semi-freshly re-written in C++ according to the blog

m48 10y ago

I was always under the impression this program was a level editor made primarily for use with for the author's Clean Game Library [1], a game engine for a functional programming language named Clean [2]. I haven't used either, but maybe people into functional programming will be interested in studying a working game engine made in a functional programming language back in 1999? [3] As for interesting features the program offers on its own… it has a pretty decent integrated graphic editor for tilemaps [4], and uses a template language for defining the output format instead of providing a generic parsable file format [5]. It also appears to abstract away layers by making each tile in your map consist of a "front," "middle," and "back" tile [6]. In general, it seems like a more old-school version of Tiled, and may be useful for people developing for/on older systems that want a very lightweight tilemap editor. For people used to programs like Tiled, though, there's probably no compelling reason to switch to this tool. The lack of a working undo function in the map editor could be a dealbreaker, for one. [1] http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php [2] http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean [3] http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/ http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/ [4] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html [5] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD [6] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor

rtpg 10y ago

I remember watching Notch do a ludum dare and actually use paint.NET as his level editor. Each color can be set to a tile, and you can read in the bitmap easily to load a level. A fun way to quickly crank out maps.

realharo 10y ago
Similarly, I once made a game with vector-based levels and just used Inkscape as the editor.
- veli_joza 10y ago
  This might be the perfect application of Inkscape. As programmer, you can edit XML model and add data to your objects. You can also write Python plugins to integrate into your asset pipeline. I used it to draw art which was converted to bitmaps, define polygon shapes for Box2D bodies, define joints between shapes (rope/spring/hinge), select static/dynamic properties, assign mass/restitution/friction...

astannard 10y ago

I have little trust in anything from SourceForge, it may look good but it's tainted by being on SourceForge so I wont touch it. Sorry

cheiVia0 10y ago
https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut... https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
- astannard 10y ago
  Thanks for the link, I am glad they are turning it around.

coderjames 10y ago

I use Tile Studio as my only sprite and map editor for 2D platformer development (first in C, then C++, now Lua/Love). The ability to define my own output format instead of having to deal with somebody else's XML is a killer feature for me - a primary reason I've previously tried and discarded Tiled.

cableshaft 10y ago
You can define your own output format? Hot damn, I'm sold. It took a long time to get Tiled parsed, especially since I needed additional features it didn't have. And that was years ago, so I wasn't looking forward to going through that process again. I wish more software in general allowed you to freely define your output format.