Sidescroller Tile Set Maker

Sidescroller Tile Set Maker (STSM) is a tool created to lend a hand to people working on 2D side-scrolling games by creating slopes, complete with shadows, and putting them on tiles. It is an applet with its own GUI that takes 3 images and 2 user-chosen values and makes a whole set of tiles on its own. The most annoying part of stage-asset building is finally over!

Usage Instructions: 
The tool requires 5 inputs: 3 images and 2 numeric inputs. The images need to be formated in a specific way to be usable by the tool.

Top
The top is the part of the tile that is meant to be walked on. It is made up of 3 parts of equal length in a line. These parts are left edge, looping middle and right edge.

Pattern
The tile pattern represents the ground of the stage and is made up of 6 square pieces in a 3 by 2 grid. The columns are left edge, center and right edge. The rows are center and bottom edge, forming corners in the bottom left and right.

Palette
The palette image is a necessary part in applying the top of the tiles to the ground pattern. Made up of 2 columns and as many lines as you wish to change colours, the colour on the left of each line will be replaced with the colour to its right if that part of the ground is within the shaded part of the ground. Colours that should not be replaced, need not to be put on the sheet. Even with a shadow depth of 0, a palette file needs to be provided.

Custom Tile (optional)
A custom tile can, but must not, be provided which will be appended to the tile set. The ground must be black, the rest of the image white. An example shape is provided with the tool.

Background Colour
A background colour needs to be specified so that the background of the top image is correctly cut out. If the image does not have a background, pick a colour which is not on the image.

Grass Height
The grass height value represents by how much the top is shifted upwards. If the top begins where the collision is, this value can be 0, else it should be the number of pixels the "grass" (thus the name) stands above the ground.

Shadow Depth
Shadow depth is a value that decides how deep the shadow underneath the top is. Colours on the ground pattern with are within this value's number of pixels below the top are replaced with their darker variant from the palette image. At a value of 0, no colours are replaced.

Once all necessary values and images have been input, you can click the Convert button to create the tile set. A preview will appear in the window above. If you are satisfied with the results, click the Save Output button and a window will open which allows you to save the result under any name you want.