Hello, I am Efi. I am developing a game engine that can import TMX maps made with Tiled (https://thorbjorn.itch.io/tiled).

If you have ever used Tiled, I have a few questions for you:

1. How do you use it in your game making process? Do you just use it to make an image to use in your game or do you use object layers to add functionality etc?

2. What features do you expect an engine to support? For example, I think “Infinite Maps” is detrimental to keep around when importing a map into a game because changing tiles can unexpectedly offset the layers, but maybe it’s worth allowing…

3. What conventions do you use? I usually have a layer named Collision for collider mapping, and a Z-level property, but maybe you do different things! I want to know!

And anything else you can tell me about how you use this tool or other similar tools would be helpful, thanks~ <3

1. Generally I'll be editing one or more layers of tilemap and use the tile indices in my engine to sort out collisions if at all possible.
   
   1. If it makes sense for the project, I'll place markers for enemy spawn positions or whatever as point objects or rects or polys for areas, polylines for patrol routes - but I generally don't "dress them up" like I've seen others do; I just set the name of the point
2. I'm afraid this depends on what the engine is meant to do :)
   
   1. General purpose = support as much as possible.
   2. Definitely need rect tile layer support and support for getting the information out of different types of objects
   3. Infinite map mode still has an origin set in the file IIRC which should be used for positioning the tilemap and avoiding offsets. You'd have to keep the map as chunks in-engine.
3. Here's an example from arco because it's what I have on hand. It's not necessarily "representative" other than, no real concrete convention between games.

In general people's expectations from tilemaps seem incredibly varied. For KAG and Trench Run we just loaded from png image maps and this was popular with the community because its very easy to edit a png image; but it doesn't allow sub-tile offsets. Some games will just use one layer and will set up all the other stuff with hardcoded stuff in engine. Some games will use all the advanced object prototype stuff. Expect to get wildly different responses if the net falls wide enough :)

Hope it helps

I used Tiled for all my games until now. Eight of them - though not all on here. Two Unity games, six in a custom engine.

I'm using all layer types, and I'm extensively using object, layer and map properties. I use it mostly for levels (showed as parallax levels by using a depth property. Mostly orthogonal, sometimes isometric maps). I also create UI with it sometimes. In object groups, I use sprite objects, geometric objects (like polygons) and text objects.

I sometimes use Tiled's terrains, but I also created my own tools for "decorating" Tiled greyboxes, which serve a similar purpose. Here's an example:

I've never used Wang sets, infinite maps, or Tiled's tile collision system. I made my own way of encoding tile collision types more efficiently (e.g. marking climbable, destructible tiles).

As a nice bonus of the way I'm using Tiled: all of my games are easily moddable: the Tiled maps are parts of the (streaming) assets folder, not encoded. So if you're interested in the details, just have a look. :-)

You can find my games here: https://paulsgames.itch.io/

An isometric game that's not on itch is here: https://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/rolmops

If you want to know more, let me know. I can also upload my biggest Tiled game here for reference (which is all about modding using Tiled). I was planning to do that sometime anyway...