Automapping in tiled 0.8 and below

Table of Contents What is AutoMapping? examples How does it roughly work? Parts of a rulefile Parts of a rule rule regions rule condition rule output random output glossary

What is AutoMapping?

It is automatic mapping. Automatic explains this way: It delivers you a rule based support to automatically setup some layers, most often some standard ground layers. So the goal of AutoMapping is, that you only need to draw within one layer and everything else is setup for you. This brings some advantages:

• working speed - you need less time to setup a map.
• less errors - the main reason is to reduce the error rate. If you have setup the rules properly, there is no hidden error.

examples

Automapping explained(Youtube)

A zipball containing examples

How does it roughly work?

The AutoMapping feature will check some special layer you draw in. And whenever there is a change, it will be checked if any rule matches and if so this rule gets applied at the correct position.

Parts of a rulefile

A rulefile is a standard map file, which can be read and written by tiled. In one rulefile there can be defined multiple rules.

Some map properties can be set to make AutoMapping more powerful:

• DeleteTiles - This map property is a boolean property: it can be true or false. If rules of this rulefile get applied at some location in your map, this map property determines if all other tiles are deleted before applying the rules.

Consider a map where you have multiple layers. Not all layers are filled at all places. In that case all tiles of all layers should be cleared, so afterwards there are only the tiles which are defined by the rules. Since when not all tiles are cleared before, you will have still tiles from before at these places, which are not covered by any tile.

• AutomappingRadius - This map property is a number: 1, 2, 3 ... It determines how many tiles around your changes will be checked as well for redoing the AutoMapping at live Automapping.
• NoOverlappingRules - A rule is not allowed to overlap on itself. introduced at version 0.8.0

Parts of a rule

rule regions

A rule consists of three different things, strictly divided as in the Input-Process-Output model. The input section in this context is called rule_region. It defines a region in which the rule is processed. This region can be of any form such as a rectangle, circle and so on. To define a rule_region for a rule, you need to have a tile layer called 'RuleRegions'. Each region is described by coherent equal tiles. (It does not matter which kind of tiles are used here, just make sure they are all equal. So even transparent tiles would work, but it actually sucks, because you will mess it up!)

rule condition

The processing of a rule is quite simple: For all positions in your working map it is checked if there is shape of rule_region, at which the rule applies. To see if the rule applies the set layer of the working map is compared to the ruleSet and ruleNotSet layers of your rule map. If there is a match then the rule_output is copied over from your rulefile to the working map. To decide if it is a match or not, it is necessary to describe what is desired in an exact way. It is done in the rule_condition section. The rule_condition section consists of the layers 'RuleSet' and 'RuleNotSet'. There can be multiple layers of each.

rule output

All Layers Rule_* of the rulefile will be copied over to the working map if the rule matches. That is for example parts of Rule_Ground will be copied over in the Ground layer of the working map.

random output

If you want to have different outputs, you put some different qualifiers before the underscore. So Rule1_Ground and Rule2_Ground would make a random output into the Ground layer. So you can put different rule outputs in those 2 layers and at Automapping only one of both gets copied over. Of course you can even have more than 2 layers such as Rule3_Ground. Then one of these three layers will be choosen to be copied over into the Ground layer.

Putting different qualifiers works also across different layers. Assume we still have Rule1_Ground and Rule2_Ground. This produces random output into the Ground layer. Maybe in another layer such as in the Collision layer different output is also required, which matches the outputs given in the Ground layer. So just use the same qualifiers to describe the different outputs to get the expected behavior. When having the layers Rule1_Collision and Rule2_Collision, Automapping will output Rule1_Collision to the Collision layer if Rule1_Ground is output to Ground. If Rule2_Ground is used, also Rule2_Collision will be used, since the qualifier ("2") is the same.

glossary

This naming convention is used:

• a working map is a map which you are working on, i.e. that will be the map of your game afterwards.
• a rulefile is a file where some rules are stored.
• a rule is the combination of a rule_region, a rule_condition and a rule_output
• a rule_region is a region defined by coherent equal tiles in a rulefile in a layer, which is called 'RuleRegions'. It describes the region, where the rule_condition and rule_output are taken from.
• a rule_condition is found in a rulefile in the layers, which are called 'RuleSet' or 'RuleNotSet'.
• a rule_output is found in a rulefile in layers, which have the prefix 'rule'.