Resolved Get a tile index? Why is this so difficult???

I would figure this would be a braindead easy thing to get but for some reason, I am finding absolutely no option for this anywhere. All I want to do is get the index of the tile in the palette for any given tilemap position. Why is there no option for this? No, I don't care about any of the super fancy extra features, just gimme the hot dog... err I mean tile index... I code my own physics and coldet and am about to just roll my own tile mapping functionality too if I can't figure this out.

I've tried using

Code (CSharp):

1. GetTile

and it returns a string that is almost useful, but using

Code (CSharp):

1. Parse

throws an exception because of all the excess nonsense in the result, and

Code (CSharp):

1. TryParse

always fails. Always. Using

Code (CSharp):

1. Substring

to try to get the tile index partially works, but only until it bumps into a character in the result that causes it to fail. I was able to get the desired result as long as the tile range was 10-99 because I limited the substring to 2 places and knew where the index number in the result started (started at 6, since the tileset was called "tiles" and Unity adds the _ before the number).

This is such a simple little detail and I have no idea why it's not easier to figure out. The documentation has been of no help at all, google is of no help at all, youtube is of no help at all. WHAT AM I MISSING...

For reference, I'm using 2021.3.5f1.

EDIT: OK so I figured I should put in the exact code I'm using thus far. So to get the tile I'm looking at, I've got this code:

Code (CSharp):

1. sGetVal = GameWorld.GetTile<Tile>(GameWorld.WorldToCell(CheckPosition)).ToString();

where "GameWorld" is the tilemap and "CheckPosition" is a Vector3. The result I get is

Code (CSharp):

1. tiles_34 (UnityEngine.Tilemaps.Tile)

and there's the 34 in there, which is the value I need, but all of the parsing functions fail because of the extra baggage, and I should not have to go to such extremes to simply get this index number. Just. Give. Me. The. Index. Number. Already.

 

I am not sure how I could make my question any more clear. I am being as concise as humanly possible. I don't post questions like this unless I am completely stumped on something. This should be something very easy to figure out and yet it isn't.

The index of the tile in the tile palette is... the index of the tile in the tile palette. In this case, it's 34. It's tile 34. I am not sure how this could be made any more clear. The tile palette window doesn't even show you the index of the tile you've selected, which also doesn't help, nor does the grid show you the cell number you're plotting. I really wish these were implemented features... they would be nice quality-of-life improvements.

...which does not help at all. It gives me nothing to work with. That's why I did ToString() to try to parse it to get the index. The value's right in there because of how the tile palette is set up. Without the ToString() there is nothing I see that helps.

I honestly have no idea how this could be made any more clear. I stated it literally as clearly as possible. I want to check for the index of a tile on the grid. The numeric value of the tile index inside the tile palette. That's all.

 

No, this is literally related to the tilemap functionality. I only tried parsing the string because I could not figure out how to get the index.

 

I'm not trying to argue, I'm trying to figure out basic functionality that should be super easy. So I DO have to look at the name of the tile? Ugh, that's gonna be inefficient.

EDIT: Again, this is not a scripting issue. My intention was never to have to parse a value. I should not have to do that. That's just plain ridiculous. My intention was simple to get an index value from the tilemap. That has nothing to do with string parsing... or at least it shouldn't. There's clearly some crossed wires here.

 

Because I code my own physics and coldet, so I need numeric values from the tilemap data that refer to an index in the tile palette. If this isn't possible then fine, but it's very wasteful to have to process a string to do what should be able to be done with numeric data directly. And again, I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I think there's some miscommunication here. Maybe I'm asking for something that simply doesn't exist in Unity.

 

...ugh... ok. Well, thanks for your time, it's much appreciated. I wonder why no one's ever heard of accessing map data directly though... it's pretty standard procedure for 2D development. Oh well.

 

Well, sort of... InstanceID isn't quite the same thing as what I was looking for, but maybe I could roll a system together to emulate what I need... but it looks more like I'm going to have to just go old school manual style on this one. Well, at least now I know that what I was looking for simply doesn't exist. I can deal with that. It's the "not knowing" part that's the challenge. Thanks again for your help.