A downloadable tool for Windows

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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.

StatusReleased
CategoryTool
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(1 total ratings)
AuthorMrLevRocks
Tags2D, Automation, grid, map, palette, sonic, Tilemap, tilemap-based-tools, Tileset

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

SonicTileSetMakerV2.0.zip 2 MB

Development log

Comments

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These are the images I use

These images should be fine, I made them with the tool in mind. Do you get any error messages saying a field is empty, do you input all necessary fields (maybe you forgot the background colour)? Only other issue I could see is Java not being installed on your PC, so the tool cannot be ran. Is it?

Yes, the problem was in Java. I installed it and everything worked. Thanks a lot

You're welcome. Enjoy using this and my other tools!

Good afternoon! I have read your updated description. Could you explain how to format the images so that the tool can use them correctly. I just use the embedded images with the tool and click convert, but nothing happens.

Hello! Could you please help me. I can't figure out this useful tool. Can you please record a video tutorial of the process of creating a set of tiles

The description of this tool is so old, a rewrite to make it clearer is long overdue. Making an example video is a good idea, I'll consider making one if I can.
In the meantime, do you have any problems I could help you with? If you're unsure about something, I could explain to you how to use it.

Thank you very much for the answer. I look forward to your video tutorial on this useful tool.

(+1)

is there a way to have a custom tile shape that uses the "factory" style rotation of the top texture?

Do you mean bending around a custom shape? Sadly not, to do that I'd actually have to find a way to express the shapes mathematically. I can do that with circles because they're so simple. 

(+1)

ah, alright. thanks again for making this tool though, this is still criminally underrated and has saved me hours of work 👍

You're more than welcome. If there's any ideas for features or new tools I could make, feel free to reach out. And don't forget to recommend it to all your friends and colleagues!

(+2)

Woah, this is ridiculously underrated! it took me a few minutes to figure it out, but once you do, this is an incredibly useful tool to jumpstart tileset creation! I'm actually working on the level chunks for a little fangame called Sonic CD 2, and this has helped a ton! :D Here's the tileset btw :P

yes

Thank you. If you think there's something to add that would make using this better, go ahead and tell me.
That tile set looks great so far looking forward to what you make of it!

the only thing I'd add is an extra version of the first two tiles on the bottom row, where it doesn't use the "bottom" tiles, so that tilesets can still have a bottom tile without having tall walls have the bottom tile keep popping up. but other than that, it's a great tool, thank you so much for making this! :D