Build game maps in Tilemap Desk

Open Tilemap Desk from Flipline's tool rail, from the Pixel Studio toolbar, or start with the Meadow islands tilemap example. The desk keeps its own maps: the five most recent are autosaved on this device, and Save project downloads an editable .flipline-tilemap.json file.

Add a tileset

Choose Add tileset image… and pick a PNG sprite sheet. In Cut the sprite sheet into tiles, set Tile width (px), Tile height (px), Margin (px) and Spacing (px) exactly as you would in Tiled. The dialog shows how many columns, rows and tiles fit. Opened from Pixel Studio, Add Pixel Studio sprite turns every frame into a tile, or cuts the named regions of frame 1 into tiles that keep the region name and pivot as tile properties. Add demo terrain tileset adds an original meadow tileset with a ready terrain set. A PNG sent to Flipline from another app, such as a sprite sheet from Lumina, can also become a tileset: choose Use as a tileset in Tilemap Desk.

Paint the map

Pick a tile in the tile grid, then choose a tool: Paint tiles, Erase tiles, Fill connected tiles, Fill rectangle, Autotile brush, Pick a tile or Object tool. Flip horizontally, Flip vertically and Flip diagonally apply to the tiles you paint. Undo and redo work for every edit (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z).

Everything also works with the keyboard. Focus the map, move the cell cursor with the arrow keys (Shift moves five cells) and press Space to apply the tool. With Fill rectangle, the first Space sets a corner and the second fills. Arrow keys move between tiles in the tile grid and between tools.

Autotile terrain

A terrain set tells the desk which tile belongs to which neighbour pattern. Choose Add terrain set…, pick a Rule set (Blob, 47 tiles, Wang edge, 16 tiles or Wang corner, 16 tiles) and give the First tile. The variants follow in Flipline slot order, which the dialog explains, or you can list one tile per slot. Now paint with the Autotile brush: every cell gets the variant that matches its neighbours, and the neighbours update too. Hold Shift (or press Shift+Space) to erase terrain. Autotile from terrain rows… fills a whole area from # and . rows. The panel tells you when variants are missing and fallback tiles are used.

Collisions, properties and animation

The panel under the tileset edits the selected tile. Set a Tile type, add Custom properties, and use Make the whole tile solid, Add a collision rectangle or Add a collision polygon. Tick One-way for platforms you can jump through. Frames (tile:milliseconds, separated by commas) makes the tile animated. Tick Show collisions above the map to see the merged collision rectangles that the export will contain.

Layers and objects

In Layers, add tile, object and image layers, rename them, hide them, change Layer opacity (%) and move them up or down. On an object layer, the Object tool places rectangles (drag, or press Space twice), points (click) and polygons (click or Space for each point, Enter to finish, Escape to cancel). Select an object in the Objects list to edit its name, type, position and properties. Map settings switch between Orthogonal and Isometric (diamond), resize the map or make it an Infinite map (grows in 16 × 16 chunks).

Export

Choose Export map…. Pick Tiled TMX (XML), Tiled JSON (.tmj), Engine-neutral JSON, Collision rectangles (JSON), Flattened PNG, ZIP bundle with every format and the images or Flipline tilemap project. For TMX and Tiled JSON, choose the Tile layer encoding: CSV, base64, base64 + zlib or base64 + gzip. Maps refer to tileset images by file name, so keep the PNGs next to the map; the ZIP contains them. Open map reads TMX and Tiled JSON files with embedded tilesets. Select the map together with its PNG images to see the tiles.

The same engine powers the Tilemap Converter and Autotile Generator tools for people and AI agents (see Flipline's tool list), so an export from the desk and a conversion there give identical files.