Tiler - tile map editor

Tiler is a flexible map editor that lets you easily design large 2D tile maps for your game. Built directly into the Unity editor, it provides a custom workspace and integrates directly into various other Unity systems such as navigation.

Get it now from the Asset Store ​

I started creating it because there were certain features I felt other editors lacked, especially when dealing with extremely large tilesets (ie. filtering.) Also being built directly into Unity provides a number of benefits such as easier integration into unity projects and not needing to export providing instant previewing.

Video Preview
Release Video

Features
-Efficient editing tools including fill, copy and rotate
-Generate highly optimized colliders
-Easily bake a navigation mesh
-Tile filters to organize large tilesets
-Easily undo or redo texture changes
-Custom built workspace
-Ideal on all platforms
-Supports both Unity 3.5 and 4.x

I'm looking for any feature requests and feedback that'd make the extension more usable.

 

Wow, this looks great. I understand from your description that exporting was not one of your goals but am wondering if it might be in a future update so one might include such in design documentation?

 

my issue was the annoyance of having to export from 3rd party applications into unity. i have nothing against exporting from unity into something, anything in particular you wanted?

It already writes the textures to disk as a png so you could edit them in any paint program if that's all you wanted.

 

To PNG would be perfect. Looking forward to the release. Great work!

 

Yeah it already does that so all good!

Anyway had a late night of coding and just finishing up the collision



Can specify a whole tile as a collision, or just sections of it.

Just need to make sure it's all bug free, write some documentation and I'm ready to release.
Also! I will be releasing 2 versions, a free stripped back version for anyone who just wants to do very basic painting and the paid full feature version which I intend to keep improving.

 

Looking really good and user friendly!

 

http://i.imgur.com/60D33nc.jpg

navmesh generated! I've never really played around with them but can I just say it's a bit silly I have to use a mesh renderer instead of a collider.
anyway it's on track for a release this week. I also have a volunteer to bug test and give me some feedback tomorrow.

 

Nav mesh stuff looks really good. What kinda price point you looking at? (Sorry if was mentioned already but didn't see it)

Also might sound like a strange/dumb question but what about ctrl+z? I found with some other Unity tile set editors that as I'm painting if I hit ctrl+z it does not recognize the painting of a single tile as a record in the editor history. Then it just ends up actually deleting the whole tile set as the editor will see that as the last thing that happened. It might seem like a minor thing but when your used to doing that it's really hard to change your workflow.

Any sort of layering ability? (Again sorry if it was mentioned but didn't see it)

Looks great so far.

 

How I'm creating tile maps I don't believe the built in unity undo will work as I want (I'll have to test) but I intend to write my own (it's last thing I need to implement before releasing, but framework is already there). I do have the ability to temporary override unity global hotkeys (and add my own which I've done) so I might be able to bind it to the same thing when using the editor.

As for price, it'd be around $20-30.

For layers it's not something that'll I'll get in for launch, but I really want to add them not too long down the track. I specifically want to be able to add a layer of objects for unusual shapes.

You can have as many 'tiler maps' though and place them on different height levels if that's all you require.

-edit-

as expected I can't use the built-in unity undo so I just wrote my own. seems to work well.

 

Looking at submitting this tomorrow to the store, I've now uploaded a release video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ABDDuoAa98

And there is a written manual http://bovinelabs.com/tiler/readme.pdf for anyone wanting to get a better understanding what Tiler is about.

 

Very nice. Looking forward to this. Post back when on asset store. Will purchase right away

 

I've submitted Tiler to the assetstore a few days ago so hopefully it's up sometime early next week. In the meantime I've already started working on layers as promised. I'll wait till Tiler appears in the assetstore before I publish a new version with layers, but they'll be in pretty soon after launch.

http://i.imgur.com/ZqTVa2E.png

You can tick the boxes to make various layers visible or hidden to camera in editor, and you can click the text to set the active layer you're currently working on.

 

Accepted! You can get it now from the asset store: http://u3d.as/content/bovine-labs/tiler/4WH

As I said in my last post, I'll be releasing an update for layers very soon.

 

Just purchased and am having problems in 3.5.7

Get these errors when I first open the tiler window :

Code (csharp):

1. TargetException: Non-static field requires a target
2. System.Reflection.MonoField.GetValue (System.Object obj)
3. Tiler.UnityInternal.CreateDropInfo (System.Object dropArea, DockPosition dockPosition, Int32 size) (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Util/UnityInternal.cs:370)
4. Tiler.UnityInternal.Dock (UnityEditor.EditorWindow window, UnityEditor.EditorWindow dockToWindow, DockPosition dockPosition, Int32 size) (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Util/UnityInternal.cs:290)
5. DrawWindow..ctor (.TilerWindow window) (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Draw/DrawWindow.cs:48)
6. System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
7. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
8. System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
9. System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
10. System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, BindingFlags bindingAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] args, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, System.Object[] activationAttributes)
11. System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, System.Object[] args, System.Object[] activationAttributes)
12. System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, System.Object[] args)
13. TilerWindow.Update () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/TilerWindow.cs:42)
14. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
15. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
16. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
17. System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters)
18. UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj)
19. UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName)
20. UnityEditor.HostView.SendUpdate ()
21. UnityEditor.EditorApplication.Internal_CallUpdateFunctions ()
22.  
23.  
24. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
25. UnityEditor.SplitView.PerformDrop (UnityEditor.EditorWindow w, UnityEditor.DropInfo di, Vector2 screenPos)
26. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
27. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
28. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
29. System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters)
30. Tiler.UnityInternal.Dock (UnityEditor.EditorWindow window, UnityEditor.EditorWindow dockToWindow, DockPosition dockPosition, Int32 size) (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Util/UnityInternal.cs:299)
31. DrawWindow..ctor (.TilerWindow window) (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Draw/DrawWindow.cs:51)
32. System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
33. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
34. System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
35. System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
36. System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, BindingFlags bindingAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] args, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, System.Object[] activationAttributes)
37. System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, System.Object[] args, System.Object[] activationAttributes)
38. System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type type, System.Object[] args)
39. TilerWindow.Update () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/TilerWindow.cs:42)
40. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
41. Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
42. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
43. System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters)
44. UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj)
45. UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName)
46. UnityEditor.HostView.SendUpdate ()
47. UnityEditor.EditorApplication.Internal_CallUpdateFunctions ()
48.  
49.  
50. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
51. BrushWindow.Toolbar () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Draw/BrushWindow.cs:62)
52. BrushWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Draw/BrushWindow.cs:35)
53. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)

Get this error when I click file in the tiler window :

Code (csharp):

1. ArgumentException: You can only call GUI functions from inside OnGUI.
2. UnityEngine.GUIUtility.CheckOnGUI ()
3. UnityEngine.GUILayoutUtility.DoGetRect (UnityEngine.GUIContent content, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options)
4. UnityEngine.GUILayoutUtility.GetRect (UnityEngine.GUIContent content, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options)
5. UnityEngine.GUILayout.DoBox (UnityEngine.GUIContent content, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options)
6. UnityEngine.GUILayout.Box (System.String text, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options)
7. Section.ToolBar () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Section.cs:57)
8. DrawWindow.ToolBar () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Draw/DrawWindow.cs:169)
9. Section.OnGUI () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Section.cs:18)
10. DrawWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/Main/Draw/DrawWindow.cs:110)
11. TilerWindow.OnGUI () (at Assets/Tiler/Editor/Windows/TilerWindow.cs:61)
12. System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)

After these errors then the windows freak out and I cant close any of them.



This was in an empty project (Besides tiler of course). I tried it out in Unity 4 and it works fine but 3.5 seems broken. Is there an extra step or something to make it work in 3.5?

 

hmm I developed it in 3.5.7f6 so it should work fine. I know exactly what part is causing that error. I access some of the internal unity engine functions to do docking but I thought I had all cases handled.. I'll look into it for you. Do you have the exact version that you're using so I can check?

I've quickly added a error check to see if for some reason the version someone is using is unsupported. This will just mean auto docking will not work until I add a specific check for the versio but it'll prevent the error and will let you use it anyway.

sorry for any inconvenience, i'll publish a fix as soon as possible.

 

Hi tertle,
can we get some textures examples , it will be fine
Thanks.

 

Sorry, I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for. Could you elaborate.

 

Yep I'm using 3.5.7f6 Pro version. I also reinstalled Unity again to make sure and still got the error.

 

I'm sending you a private message with a new version.

 

Hi guys, it appears there is currently an issue with using Tiler on a mac. I am in the process of acquiring one to try solve the issue. Hopefully this doesn't take more than a day or two, sorry for any inconvenience.

 

Just a quick update for the mac issue. I had a look into it and it's caused because unity on mac seems to handle EditorWindows slightly differently. When created they don't seem to appear in the global list in the same frame away which is what I require to dock. I've decided rather than trying to write a specific workaround workaround for macs, I'm restructuring Tiler to use just a single EditorWindow and just use the standard gui windows so everyone has the same system.

Unfortunately I'm heading away for 3 days at the end of the week and there is a lot of stuff I need to organize beforehand. I'm going to try get a build up before that but I may not be able to. At worse I'll have it done monday (I'm Australian so Sunday for the US) and I'll privately send those who've contacted me the fixed copy so they don't need to wait for the asset store approval.

 

Just got back from my trip an hour ago, stayed a day longer than I planned. I already solved the original issue on mac but the second one when clicking on menus still existed which I have just solved as well. I'll be uploading the new version later today hopefully, I just need to check the something else is working and will email the couple of people who had issues with the version so they don't need to wait.

 

Great news. Eagerly awaiting the new version. Thanks!

 

I ended up holding off uploading the build as I wanted to get a few things in and fix a few more bugs that popped up, including another one specifically for osx. (On OSX EditorWindows in popup mode don't focus by default so OnFocusLost isn't called)

I've also added a few other things. First implementation of layering, it works ok but it limits you to set of maps per scene. I'll add ability to group sets of layers and the more importantly, being able to merge layers into a single texture for performance.

Includes a wide range of bug fixes, most which occurred on rare cases. Also redesigned something slightly to avoid a rare bug with the unity engine, saving assets and the memorystream becoming corrupt.

I've also changed saving a bit. For starters it doesn't save unnecessarily so it's a lot faster in a lot of cases. I've also added some checks to reduce risk of loss. It now checks if you add 2 maps from same prefab, will give you an error and refuse to save until resolved. This way they won't override each other. Also added a notification to remind people to save after a period of time.

The next thing on my todo list is to add a rebuild option if your textures become corrupt if unity crashed or something, and maybe add some form of backup.

It's been submitted, but I've spent you a PM with a copy so you don't need to wait for the fix.

 

A new version has already been approved, hopefully it fixes any issues anyone might be having. You'll need to run the updater before using it which'll auto popup if you have any existing tilesets in your project to fix a bug with them from earlier versions.

Please let me know if anyone finds any other issues and I'll fix them as humanly possible. On a side note, remember to backup regularly regardless of what you are doing!

 

I have been informed 4.2 breaks navmeshes. I'm investigating now (after my 4.2 download finishes!)

On a side note, it appears NavMesh baking is now available in free version of unity so I'll give support for those using 4.2+.

-edit-

Ok seems issue is related to MinRegionArea which seems to be slightly more aggressive in Unity 4.2. If no mesh is being generated play around with that value by lowering it (it's under the advanced options) or the radius.

 

Just wrote my review for Tiler in the asset store, still love it.
The Navmesh bug I reported is not related to Tiler, after a few more tests I think it's a general bug in Unity 4.2.
It just generates bad Navmeshes where you can walk through unwalkable areas where no navmesh is generated, which makes it useless.
If anyone uses Navmesh, just rollback to Unity 4.1.5.

 

New version has been submitted.

-Unity free users can now generate NavMeshes when they use Unity 4.2+
-Added a button under the misc toolbar to do NavMesh generation using all layers.

 

Does Tiler work together with 2D Toolkit?

 

I haven't used 2D toolkit, but I've been informed 2D toolkit uses z for depth axis while tiler uses y atm. This means at the moment you'd need to rotate one or the other working with it to get them to mesh. I'm going to look at an an option for flipping the axis but I'm pretty busy for the next couple of weeks so not sure I'll have free time for a while.

 

I have a proposition of new features.
1) A possibility to make a white background of the map transparent. My map should be placed on some other background but now I have this bigass white square in the middle of my game's screen.
2) That would be absolutely wonderfull if you add a possible to put some image to a background of the map editor that I could use as a reference. For example I want to draw the interier of a castle. I want to put a picture of that castle to the back so I could place the rooms accordingly to the exterier of the castle.

Without this features, usage of your product is pretty difficult and in some cases even imposible for me, so I have a hope that you will add this functions as soon as possible.

Thanks in adwance!

 

1) you can. just change the shader to transparent/diffuse (or another shader of your choice). You'll have to make sure your textures are setup properly or you might get some minor ghosting along edges or something though.
2) not a bad idea, but I've been sick recently and I have my masters exams in a few weeks so I won't likely get anything done till after that. I had some other fixes I promised a month ago but I still haven't got around to them.

-edit-

to elaborate on the design decision of 1), tiler works under the assumption that you want to group tiles into as large a texture as possible for performance reasons (ideally textures of size 1024-4096) but this doesn't have to be the case. If you're building a desktop game or just want a few random tiles around no reason you can't create small layers that have block sizes of 128 or something. As for defaulting to diffuse rather than transparent, just purely to reduce draw calls unless you need transparency.

 

Well, Transparent/Diffuse solves my first problem pretty much. Thank you! The second problem nevertheless have became a lot more crucial at the moment because now I need a two layer map with a floor on one layer and walls on another. This is needed to get different colliders for the floor and for the walls. I need to be able to set my walls layer on the background and draw my floore into the rooms. So as soon as you will get some spare time - this function would be very useful!

 

Did you ever get layers working for Tiled?

 

Now, in Unity 4.3 default depth axis is Z as well. I've just bought the plugin and was very disappointed to find out that it doesn't work very well with default unity stuff. Can you fix it by any chance?

 

I have to add, this tool is completely broken for me. Nothing seems to work and the documentation even looks like its getting out of date (that or the tool is so broken is doesn't resemble the documentation).

 

I haven't tested it in the most recent patch (I'll go do that now) but I didn't think it was completely broken.

Anyway I realize it's a bit outdated now due to 4.3, I'm slowly rewriting it completely to use unity sprites and same coord system but with my masters and another project it's just taking longer than I'd expect.

 

Hi, i have just purchased Tiler, and as it was mentioned, i have some problem with the 4.3 version the Unity. So i ask if there is new information about
the update for Tiler, so to be more compatible with Unity 4.3

 

I am using Unity 4.6, and the tiler is working great, except when I reach a certain size, saving my texture will cause various cells to go white. After that I have to start over. I really want to use tiler, but I can't get it not to stop doing this. (Note: They are not grey like un-painted cells, but simply white). I don't have any way to recover from this once it happens so I loose all my work. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Just wanted to update the problem was my anti-virus was freaking out when I saved the meshes. (It doesn't like a lot of files being created at once). After I disabled the anti-virus Tiler is working awesome for 4.6
Documentation wasn't too bad, the navmesh was a bit tricky but all in all a great tool!
Please consider porting to Unity 5.0!

 

Just wanted to see if there are plans in the works for doing a Unity 5 update.

 

Very interested in a Unity 5 update!

 

I was able to get mine working in Unity 5 with a few tweaks, haven't tested everything yet though. It would definitely be great to have it working out-of-the-box with Unity 5 though. Thanks for the great plugin.

 

Hi,
im using Unity 5.6.0f3 personal and I have the error that the editior is not adding the texture to the created tile.
Is there an special setting i have to do on the sprite/texture? Or is there an fixed version available?
thx

 

hmm. is this no longer in development? the app store says its defunct and no longer available...