Tileset Automapping (Tiled)

Ever wanted to quickly design your 2D game levels using tilemap automapping? If you're a fan of the famous Tiled open-source software, you might want to get this ready-to-use automapping setup (+ the 3 demo tilesets in the pack!) to get started quickly and auto-transform your basic prototype shapes into proper sides, corners, holes and more... :)

In a nutshell, in Tiled, automapping is a way to transform a basic reference map into a more advanced, detailed, aesthetic output version. So you simply need to place reference prototype blocks to mark the spots where there should be terrain, and the engine will auto-compute which nice tile from your actual tileset image should be used instead, given all the neighbouring tiles and the rules you defined beforehand.

The Tiled files in this pack (.tsx, .tmx) work as follows:

• The tilesets folder contains 4 tileset images (that will be parsed and used by Tiled):
  • _prototype.png: a very basic tilemap for the simple reference blocks (contains some additional diagonal slope references, even though the demo tilesets don't use them here)
  • template.png: a grayscale, slightly more detailed terrain tileset with actual edges, corners, etc., to use as the automap output as a first test
  • icy.png and snowy_rocks.png: more artistic tilesets I made with a pixel art vibe and a Christmas-y "chill" ambiance, using the same overall organisation as the template.png file
• The prototype.tsx and terrain.tsx tileset files define the reference prototype and output terrain tilesets, respectively. By default, the prototype.tsx tileset asset uses the _prototype.png tileset image, and the terrain.tsx tileset asset uses the template.png tileset image. (But of course you can edit this terrain.tsx file to use another tileset image from the tilesets folder!)
• The rules/autotile_rules.tmx file, or "automapping rules file", explains the engine which neighbours it needs to check for each type of output tile. The rules.txt file tells Tiled where to find this "automapping rules file" - it is autoread by the software, as long as it is in the same folder as the currently edited map *.tmx file.
• Finally, the demo.tmx map example allows you to draw an automapped tile (either by enabling the "Map > AutoMap While Drawing" option, or by pressing <Ctrl+M> to update the automap).

👉 The 3 demo tilesets are based on this great tileset template by Nonsensical2D.