The Mana World Forums

Greetings all,

The Wiki is, all gung-ho on getting maps up and running, but we're missing a tutorial on how to make tilesets. I can probably do this in Gimp and just grab a sledgehammer, but before the experimentation starts I'd like to know if there's anything I should be aware of.

If someone could briefly put a small brief tutorial together it would be helpful.

What I want to know is:

Do I need any specific software?
What are the specifications that I need to conform to?
What am I supposed to save as? (I get where to save it).


Just the basics really.

Using: Fedora 18 (Linux). (So no photoshop).

Tilesize of 32x32 (client limit; server neither knows nor cares about this; you may need to adjust walk speeds, though). If you're doing graphics for your own game, that's about it.

If you're doing graphics for us, see Guidelines.

So there are no height or width limits?

"Tileset size: Width: 512, Max height: 512 (for 1x1 sets) " <- Is this a fixed size or...?

...I'll load up pinta instead.

Seems like .png and any software can be used.

Powers of two are best for image dimensions (faster handling by the client). Exact dimensions don't matter.

Excellent. Now to get back into this...tile-set...stuff. It's been a while and I was a newb back then too. (Can't draw for toffee).


Oh yeah before I forget. Thank you!

I faintly remember some bugs which occured when someone tried to use a really huge tileset. But that was years ago and could probably be fixed by now.

Crush wrote:I faintly remember some bugs which occured when someone tried to use a really huge tileset. But that was years ago and could probably be fixed by now.

If we think of the same issue (the Invertika "Mammuts"). Then this was fixed iirc. But you can still work it around using multiple spritesheets and inclusion anyway.

Crush wrote:I faintly remember some bugs which occured when someone tried to use a really huge tileset. But that was years ago and could probably be fixed by now.

Tileset must be not bigger than 1024x1024 or in some old devices with OpenGL it will not work. This is limit for texture size.

Ah, that's handy. I can stick to those limits quite easily anyway.

512x512 is better for sanity of mappers, though.

o11c wrote:512x512 is better for sanity of mappers, though.

Actually, I'd prefer 512x1024 instead of two 512x512 (assuming you have enough tiles to justify it, of course. Having to switch between two sets to grab tiles intended to go together is annoying. I'd rather scroll. Though I should look into Tiled's keyboard shortcuts more.

I'm finding that as long as I design the tileset accurately, it makes more sense to switch in some cases...much like having multiple palettes.

Although this thread is marked as solved, if anyone wants to take a shot...

What does the "20 Tile border" mean. The diagram looks like 1 tile rather than 20, so does it really mean 20 px...or actually 20 tiles?

ravenshade wrote:I'm finding that as long as I design the tileset accurately, it makes more sense to switch in some cases...much like having multiple palettes.

Although this thread is marked as solved, if anyone wants to take a shot...

What does the "20 Tile border" mean. The diagram looks like 1 tile rather than 20, so does it really mean 20 px...or actually 20 tiles?

20 tiles of unwalkable space around each map is suggested to keep the player from getting to far from the center of the screen. Which diagram are you referring to?

This one

http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... ent/Border

I know it says 20... it just doesn't ...look that way, especially when making a small map.

The description above it says the units are tiles.