A simple utility app to build, save, and load tile maps
There are number of existing utilities for writing and editing tile maps. Tiled is a stand-alone application for orthogonal, hexagonal, and isometric maps. It can do fancy things like pattern-matching, automatic terrain transitions, and image placement. Simple Tiled Implementation, or STI, takes maps produced by Tiled and loads and renders them in LÖVE. You might see some mentions of Advanced Tile Loader online, but that package is no longer maintained.
Although these utilities are powerful and fun to use, they take some time to learn. tileClick is a much simpler tool for beginners.
For tileClick's most basic use, just run the library as a LÖVE application. Drag the tileClick folder containing main.lua, tileClick.lua, and the assets folder onto your LÖVE application bundle (Mac OS X), love.exe file (Windows), or use the command line (Linux): love /home/path/to/gamedir/. You'll find instructions on-screen. If you want to see how each of tileClick's functions are used, read through main.lua.
tileClick represents tile maps with strings, which might look like this:
[[
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
-------#####-------####---------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------#------------
---------#---------####---------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
]]
If you paste this into /assets/map.lua tileClick will interpret this string as a map of 24 x 32 tiles, where pound signs (#) represent tiles and dashes (-) represent blank spaces (in reality tileClick only cares whether the character is a # or anything else). The map will be rendered like this:
tileClick assumes that you are working with a 800 x 600 pixel LÖVE window and using 25 x 25 pixel tiles. Changing these settings using the GUI may be added as a feature later on, but for now this can be adjusted in the main.lua file.
This library recommends LÖVE 0.10.
Copy tileClick.lua to your root folder and require it:
TC = require "tileClick"Note that when you ask tileClick to load a map using TC:loadMap(), it assumes you have in the root directory an assets folder containing map.lua.
tileClick is licensed under the MIT License.