Native 2D tilemap support

I am wondering if there's any plan for Unity's editor to include native 2D tilemaps support. It would be great to be able to define a grid, paint tiles and then have them consolidated into meshes and colliders so that they're not just a lot of squares put next to each other with all the disadvantages involved.

Has anyone got any idea if a feature like that is planned?
Cheers!

 

It's not necessary for the engine to support that; you can implement it yourself, or there are various tilemap packages on the store if you want a pre-made solution.

--Eric

 

Thanks Eric. I checked out some of the solutions on the Assets Store but I couldn't find one I could actually use and be satisfied with. The best seems to be Tiled2Unity but it relies on using Tiled as the map editor and I would rather do everything inside Unity itself.
Are you aware of any package that actually lets you draw tiles on a grid but then consolidates everything into as few gameobjects as possible when the game is run?
Cheers!

 

Hi Tanico

Which other game out there will feature the type og graphics that you like to do ?

I've build parts of a tile editor for simple 8-bit like games if this is the thing you're after, think Mario. I've also build a system for merging Tile geometry into a single mesh.

I think that what you are after must feature some paging of objects, depending on the specs you set out for. You could try and structure your data in such a way that you load parts of the world or enviroment while you are playing and then unloading other parts. The size of the parts then needs to corrospond to how quickly the character will move in the game.

 

SpriteTile.

--Eric

 

@krispybeans the game I'm working on is a 2D platformer.. the mechanic is pretty much similar to Mario for what I mean.

@Eric5h5 I'll check your package out. Right now I rolled out my own editor. It's just the basics as it's just helping me place the tiles on a grid, but all of the tiles are GameObjects right now. I might make a step further and write some code to actually convert all of the single GameObjects into a single mesh but I've still got to figure out how to tie all of the colliders together as some tiles might have a different shape than a rectangle.

 

is there a free tool too? Since native support would be free you cannot compare it with a paid third party tool and say you dont need native support.

 

This topic was made before Unity had native tilemap support. There's no point posting in it now.

--Eric