Note: This software is currently in Beta. If you experience any errors or bugs, please report them here.
This program streamlines the creation of tilesets for SMBX2 and TheXTech by automating the most tedious parts of the process:
- Cutting the image with all your tiles into individual block-*.png images.
- Finding IDs for all the images.
- Creating the
.tileset.inifile for the Moondust Editor (former PGE Editor).
This program was originally designed for Windows, however it also can work on Linux if you will install all necessary python3 packages. If you want to try to use it on another platform or test unreleased features, feel free to build it yourself.
This program also has limited support for TheXTech project, the enhanced cross-platform port of the SMBX 1.3. It has support for PNG sprites and has the full native support by the standalone Moondust Editor, including direct level testing. However, it doesn't support any config files to customize settings for blocks and BGOs yet and keeps using the same itemset as SMBX 1.3 had with reserved blocks and BGO entries.
Get the current release here.
This program can work on Linux-based operating systems. It requires Python 3.8+.
If you have the Debian-based distribution, you need to install these dependencies to get the program to work:
sudo apt install tix-dev python3-tk python3-regex python3-pil python3-pip
sudo -H pip3 install pathvalidateThen, clone this repository into any convenient directory and try to run the main.py script to start the program.
When you launch this software, you should see the following:
Go ahead and open your tileset image to get started.
Once you've opened your image, you should see the following. The image shown here includes a test tileset that I made.
You can now configure the tileset using the options on the left panel. Refer to the tooltips in the software for more information about each option. Options that have bad values will be marked with a warning icon (⚠).
The software allows you to interact with tiles in the following ways.
To create a new tile, left-click and drag over the area of the image you want the tile to occupy. The edges of your selection will automatically snap to the grid. When you release the mouse button, a new tile will be created. You can then edit that tile's settings in the right panel. Note that tiles may not overlap. If your selection overlaps with an existing tile, a new tile will not be created.
To select a tile, simply left-click somewhere within it. Its settings will then be loaded and can be edited.
When editing a tile, any field with a bad value will be marked with a warning icon (⚠). Any tiles with bad field values will be marked in the same way.
If you made a mistake when creating a tile, such as making it the wrong size, you can delete the tile by right-clicking it and selecting Delete in the context menu.
To save the tileset, go to File->Save or press Ctrl + S. This will create a file with the same name as your tileset
image, but with the extension .tileset.json, that contains all the tileset's data. You can save the tileset even if
some settings or tile fields have bad values, but you will not be able to export a tileset with bad values.
Note: Do not edit the .tileset.json file in a text editor. It is quite easy to break the software this way. Editing
the tileset only in the software ensures that the file is changed in ways that are safe. Do not report errors or bugs
caused by hand-editing this file, as they will be ignored.
To export the tileset, go to File->Export or press Ctrl + E. This will create a directory with the same name as your tileset image and fill it with several .png and .txt files, as well as up to two .tileset.ini files if you have chosen to create Moondust Editor tilesets. Copy and paste the contents of this folder to the folder of the level you wish to use the tiles in.
This process will also assign IDs to all unassigned blocks and lock these IDs in place. This ensures that all existing tiles will keep the same ID in future exports, even if tiles are added or deleted from the tileset. If, for whatever reason, you want to re-assign the automatically-generated IDs, you can clear the assigned IDs from File->Clear Auto-Assigned IDs. This will not clear IDs that you manually assigned to individual tiles.
If the export is successful, you will see a message like the one below.
If the tileset has any bad setting values, a warning describing the problem will be displayed, and the exporting process will be aborted. The different warning messages and resolutions to them are described below.
n invalid tileset settings -- This indicates that n of the settings for the tileset have bad values. Check the left
panel and correct any settings that are marked with warning icons (⚠), then try again.
n tiles with invalid settings -- This indicates that n tiles are not configured properly. To resolve this, check all
tiles that are marked with warning icons (⚠) and correct any settings that are marked in the same way.
This indicates that you have not allocated enough IDs for all tiles that are set to have their IDs automatically assigned. To resolve this, either add more IDs to the indicated ID pool on the left panel, or specify IDs for more tiles (using the Tile ID field on the right panel), then try again.
The software will try to arrange the tiles in Moondust Editor tilesets as closely to their arrangement in the image as possible. However, this is not always possible if tiles are of differing sizes. You may wish to make some minor adjustments to the tileset in Moondust Editor after you export.
The following features are planned for future releases. You can request a new feature here. Approved feature requests will be added to this section.
World Map Tiles -- Support for world map tiles. Map Tile will be added as an option for tile type. Note that options for these will be very limited when compared with other tile types.
Tileset Combining -- Take an existing SMBX2 tileset and combine its files into an image and .tileset.ini file. This would make this tool a complete replacement for FrozenQuills's Tileset Compiler/Separator, which hasn't been updated for some time.
Solid Sizable Script Generation -- Automatically generate a simple lua library that makes all solid sizables in the tileset work. This library would still need to be manually loaded in the level or world's luna.lua file.
Better Animation Options -- Animated tiles are arranged differrently depending on the sprite sheet. Options would be added for animations that are arranged horizontally or in a grid. There would also be options for looped, ping-pong, or custom ordered animations.
Single Tile -- The only placement mode available in this release. Places a single tile in the selected area.
Multi 1x1 -- Places multiple tiles in the selected area that occupy a 1x1 square in the grid. The selected area may overlap with other tiles when this is used (but no tiles will be placed that overlap others).
This will be separate from placement modes. The software will attempt to impute the collision type of new tiles from the image data in the selected area. This will be toggleable. This may not be included if it cannot be done efficiently.