Multilayered Map Editor

The editor currently supports three layers of graphics. a base for the ground tiles, a middle layer for trees, buildings and other objects that the player character may be able to walk behind, and a top level for objects which will always be in front of the character, such as light hangings in indoor scenes.

This was a hobby project but is no longer in active development. Feel free to fork and update it.

Download version 1.0.2

Also available: JavaScript map viewer

See the Original Discussion Page

How to use

1. Download the editor. Double-click it to start the program.

2. Get some tiles or make your own.

3. Drag n drop tile images onto the editor.

4. Left mouse button paints the selected tile, right mouse button scrolls the map. Enjoy

Here's the map editor in action. (2x speed)

License:

Since people have been asking for something more standard than "do what you want", the project is now under the BSD "3-clause" license.

See LICENSE.txt in the JAR file for details.

Source Code

The source code is included in the JAR file. You can extract it using 7zip, or rename the .jar to .zip and open with your file manager of choice.

There are also the tiles and some sample maps in there too.

If you used this program or source code and found it useful, a credit or link to this page is appreciated but entirely optional.

Features

  • GIF, PNG, JPG images are used as tiles

  • Zoom in or out

  • Scroll by dragging with right mouse button

  • Adjust hue, saturation, and RGB levels to give seasonal, or night time looks to the scene.

  • Undo/Redo

  • Resizeable map on the fly

  • 32x32 grid

  • Maps save as simple text files with numbers - easy to parse.

  • Easy to make tile sets - Just drop the image files you want onto the tileset pane.

  • Transparent GIF, translucent PNG supported, hardware accelerated on Java 1.6.10 and higher

Changelog

BSD License added.

Tiles in folders can be added by dragging the folder containing them onto the tile set.

Fixed bug where clicking tiles in the chooser sometimes did not register correctly

The tileset can be edited. You can now drag new images onto the tile chooser panel to create new tiles.

Older versions of the tileset and map files are not compatible with this version or newer versions of the editor.

Undo and Redo.

Drag the map around using the right mouse button.

Beach graphic added

Flood fill button

Added missing night time scene to scenes pack

RGB, hue and saturation sliders now move to the correct values when a scene is loaded

You can now zoom in and out freely. Note that zooming in a lot with a large number of tiles may run you out of memory. (it spits a thousand exceptions to the console but you can still go on using it)

Although i have not seen any problems with continuing to use it after it doing that, as always, there are no guarantees. The worst that can happen is it stops responding or displays messed up graphics.

Added the riverbank tileset.

Small change: The colour adjust dialog is now activated and deactivated using a toolbar button. There is also now a reset button on it.

Scenes can now be easily resized and shifted around using the new toolbar buttons along the top of the screen. But be careful - if you shift some tiles off an edge, they'll be gone. It is always best to work with a larger map than you need.

Scenes can be colourised - you can adjust scalars for red, green, and blue channels, as well as hue and saturation. This allows for some nice effects such as seasons, day and night, and completely unusual colour styles, without making a whole new tile set for each effect. The colour effect is controlled using a new dialog.

Needs a bit of tweaking to compile

Even older?

No earlier versions were kept.

Here's an old screenshot i found showing the earliest version: