Map generator program

Do you know of any program that you can use to visually design video game maps?

I'm imagining the following:

In one section of the screen, you have the tile graphics.
In the other section, you have a grid where you can place the tiles.

If you change the tile graphics, the map screen is updated.

I know that Game Maker and RPG Maker can do these things. But is there maybe a small, lightweight program (maybe one that doesn't require an installation) to do such things?

Tiled, with an output plugin or converter to write your format.

I use NESST precisely for this (at least for prototyping). The only drawback is that you're locked to a gobal palette setting and can't place sprite items on the map itself. Also, there's an upper limit, so you may need to piece together a string of "rooms" (gamemaker terminology) externally.

For our our zeldaesque gothic action-adventure game, we (at least that's the plan) place components in photoshop made in NESST using layers, layer folders and the grid tool for alignment, then exporting the total map as an indexed bitmap for a separate tool to parse.

I don't really need anything to write my format. The program is purely for display issues. I'll do the code myself, step by step.

Can Tiles be used as a standalone application? The website only offers an installer link.


Is this usable in a confortable way, with putting 16 x 16 tiles on the map via drag & drop etc.?


I don't think using Photoshop really fits the idea of a small, portable lightweight program.

Yes, or kind of: As long as your chr file is organized in 2x2 patterns, you can drag-mark 4 tiles and click anywhere on the map to stamp-clone them. It gets less comfortable once you begin reusing tiles in different metatiles though: then you have to resort to copy-paste them from one position on the map to the other using the same mark tool.

edit: this only works in recent versions, so it may not be widely known? Another "hidden" feature that was introduced is that you can scroll-wrap/align pixel contents in a character using the arrows while the chr editor window is active. Really handy!

edit2: oh, and you can drag and drop tiles within the chr space; swapping them. This helps organizing tiles a lot.

Here is my custom tool, MapEd Pro and a screenshot of nesrocks using it to hack Super Pitfall.

I'm pretty sure it can. (I'm using linux and I use it standalone there) Although for windows you might have to "install" it once to extract everything. Then I think you can copy it anywhere and just run it.



Huh. Sounds like a lot of extra work to me. Writing a python script to convert from tiled format to code is pretty simple. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

The other option is the Mappy Tile Map Editor, which I know from experience CAN be run portably. I like Tiled a bit better now, but I used Mappy for a large adventure game (Anguna for GBA and DS) and it worked well.

Ooh! Mappy even has an isometric mode.

This is what I use as well. It has been a godsend.

Thanks. It looks like this is exactly what I need.


I downloaded and extracted it. The icon of the exe files shows me that it was written in Visual Basic 6.

I opened it, opened a dialog box inside the progtram where I have to enter a height value. I clicked OK without entering the value. The program crashes with an index out of range error.

Tu solución se llama TileMap