The current state of Tilesets and Tilemaps in Godot 3

** THE DEVS HAVE ALREADY SEEN THE VIDEO, PLEASE STOP LINKING IT TO THEM 🙏**

A small dive into what the main issues are with the current tile workflow in Godot.
This is the first commentary video I make so I hope you like it! I'm working hard on my English and also trying to improve my editing skills so any feedback is welcome.

Intro - 0:00
The current UX of Tilesets - 2:15
Feedback - 6:38
Conclusions - 9:24

Links in order:

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[gillesroudiere]

You shouldn't say the "s" in Gilles but otherwise you pronunciation is perfect ^^.

I agree with most observations here, getting a simple TileSet working is definitely too much work and confusing. The main plan is to fusion the TileSet and TileMap editors in the area, then to organize everything in an easier to understand way.

As gdquest already commented here, I'll start in November by making a formal proposal, feedback on it will be welcome then. :)

[GameEndeavor]

You make an excellent point about the UX for TileMaps. I've been using it for years so I'm accustom to how it works, but it must be pretty daunting for those learning it for the first time.

[Gdquest]

Totally agreed. You even skipped some of the weird steps, like your tilemap and your tileset's cell sizes can be different, each tile can have a different size... it's there since Godot 1 and while I can understand the idea, it really gets in the way. Being able to just drag a texture in the tilemap node and start selecting and drawing from it would be great. One grid, tile separation, and no arbitrary cell sizes. It would mean removing some features that several persons use, but they're often convoluted ways of doing things that just work without them, e.g. with an editor like Tiled.

Gilles is going to write a proposal, we can give him feedback when he releases it.

[castilios]

I just started Godot this week, why does this perfectly reflect exactly how I was attempting to navigate the tilemap editor and the same questions I had xd

[Rekiron]

Highly agree. I think it's cumbersome to use and I'm happy it's getting attention

[MarmotDark]

Your explanation of the "current state" did a better job explaining the tileset interface than any of the tutorials I've seen for it! thanks so much!

[Bananeisafree]

What I like about his videos, is that he is very thorough and he goes above and beyond to make everything very clear.
I'm not surprised then that even his rant videos are that involved :p
Thank you for your work !

[JonPFS]

Now to finalize image you re driving an airplane, with 100 passagers on board and you have to use the TileSet editor to land the plane... :D

[bobbytagget]

I would definitely love more of these UX demonstrations in the future. I found this video very comforting whilst watching your illustration of how complicated creating Tilesets are in Godot.

[rebca_]

Worst part about tilemaps IMO is that you cannot add custom properties to TileMaps or TileSets. As far as I can tell, for something like a tile-based puzzle game, you would have to have each tile in a tileset you want to have collision with defined in your collision code. I know that problem can be solved with using actual collision boxes, but that's not extendable to other custom properties you'll need in your games. It would be fantastic to just be able to set a tile as "solid" or "hurt" or "pickup" and leave it at that.

[JoeyMerryfield]

one thing that I dont like is that you have to already edit the tileset before you can change the options like the grid size of the tileset. to change the options, you have to first open a new tilemap, add the image, press New Single Tile or the other options, make a square somewhere, then press on that area, then the tilemap options appear on the side. I really hope in the future that the options just instantly open up instead of doing all of that.

[BigAlNaAlba]

I think you captured the new user experience with the TileMap editor very accurately.

[kusog]

I subscribed simply because this is a great contribution to the community by highlighting issues and concerns for such a great engine!

[emmanueloverrated]

I made all the same errors while trying to figure out how this work. That was quite daunting... especially since Tiled made this so easy to work with...

Two more irritants:
<rant>
- Why on earth I can't configure a default tile size for the project? If I choose to work with 16x16 tiles, stop making me changing that everytime I add a tilemap... Could it just automatically change the size to the tileset I set?

- Why on earth is it so hard to do animations? I mean, I don't understand... In 1998, when I coded my first game, one of the first feature I implemented in my editor was the ability to make tile animations (per tiles). I don't want to code shaders, or, add as script that iterate over tree 1000x1000 layers to swap the tiles or creating AnimatedTextures... Makes no sens.
</rant>

Godot is still a nice engine!

[TheRonpe]

Good points. I've never used any other engine for 2d, so i don't know how this is handled elsewhere. But now that you demonstrated it like that, i can totally see that it needs some work.

[neilwalker]

I have a 200 screen tile map with hundreds of tiles. It's painful sometimes.

1. Godot crashes if you have a few hundred tiles because it creates about 20 ui nodes for every tile. At the same time. Update max cell size from 1024 to 102400 as temp fix.

2. There is just one collision mask/layer for every single one of your tiles. If you want more you need to create many tile maps or create some other workaround

3. Unlike every other tile program, there are no layers. A workaround is many tile maps. But they are not synced, so good look changing sizes, etc.

4. Creating animated tiles is not obvious or easy.

5. Collision send back the tile map not the tile as the collider, so try finding which tile you collided with. I gave up and had to get help. It's not obvious or easy.

6. You can use dropper in tile map to find tile number, but go to the tile set and you can't!

7. Want to create a collision or tile out of your sprite sheet, good luck. I had to write a program just to do this. Imagine doing it 200 times...

8. A tile is just an Id. There is no meta data. So if you want to add, say, a weight to a tile for path finding, a damage score, etc, you have to create a separate class and link the two together. It should really allow custom tile data.

[lizardrain]

I think you just invented "playtesting a user interface"! Very unique youtube video.
Lots of good feedback here on how to improve it.

[DonLeeelbow]

and nearly 2 years later, i'm experiencing the exact same thing you demonstrated. It seems nothing has improved in this regard. i'm glad I found this video, I feel a lot less dumb now.

[KrylogaX]

When i was in my tech/engine/framework hopper stage, I got to try godot and couldnt get to make sense of the tilemap/tileset editor, always thought there was something wrong with me, but then i saw Juan"s poll on twitter and was relieved i wasnt the only one with that problem

[adagas-caouchristian]

Very fair criticism of an otherwise super cool engine. I hope your arguments reach the devs so we can have e.g. tilemap config presets in future versions of Godot - so we don't have to do all that extra tweaking. Nice video!