Tile Studio

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Tile Studio is an editor for graphics of tile-based games. The application contains a bitmap editor for creating tiles and sprites and a map editor for designing level maps. The output format is programmable, so it can be used together with most programming languages.

Tile Studio was created by Mike Wiering / Wiering Software.

[edit] Defining the Output Format

To generate output in a specific format, the user must supply a .TSD file, which describes the output. On the website, there are examples of .TSD files for several programming languages and libraries (C, Delphi, Java, BlitzBasic, etc.). Usually, the user will make a specific .TSD file per project.

The output consists of any number of text files, binary files, or images (.bmp or .png). For example, a tileset can be exported as a bitmap containing all the tiles (or only the tiles/tile combinations that are actually used in the maps), or in it can be exported pixel by pixel to a text file with RGB values.

The following example shows a simple .TSD file for BlitzMax:

; Tile Studio Definition file for use with BlitzMax

#tileset
#tilebitmap <TileSetIdentifier>TileSet.png 256
#end tilebitmap

#file <TileSetIdentifier>TileSet.bmx
Incbin "<TileSetIdentifier>TileSet.png"

Const <TileSetIdentifier>TileWidth = <TileWidth>
Const <TileSetIdentifier>TileHeight = <TileHeight>
Const <TileSetIdentifier>TileCount = <TileCount>

#map
Const <TileSetIdentifier><MapIdentifier>MapWidth = <MapWidth>
Const <TileSetIdentifier><MapIdentifier>MapHeight = <MapHeight>

Global <TileSetIdentifier><MapIdentifier>Map[][] = 
#mapdata  "..\n [["  ","  ", ..\n   "  "], ..\n  ["  "]]"
<TileNumber>
#end mapdata

#end map
#end file
#end tileset

Things that can be exported: tilesets, maps, boundmaps, palettes, individual tiles (RGB values, pixel by pixel), sequences (animations).

[edit] License

Tile Studio is free open source software under the Mozilla Public License (with the exception of the .tsd files and any code that is copied to the output, that is public domain). So Tile Studio can be used for projects that are under any license.