dandeliondino / godot-4-tileset-terrains-docs

Documentation for Godot 4's TileSet terrain sets.

Creating terrain sets (autotiling) documentation

This repo contains a PDF and resources from an archived PR that updated the Using TileSets: Creating terrain sets (autotiling) documentation for Godot 4. It is available here as a resource to help new users set up terrain tiles.

It contains content edited from the main Godot docs, and so is distributed here under that same license: © Copyright 2014-present Juan Linietsky, Ariel Manzur and the Godot community (CC BY 3.0).

Links

Github can be weird about displaying such a long PDF, so I recommend either clicking the Download raw file button on the PDF page, or using Code -> Download zip from the main repo page.

• PDF of the Creating terrain sets (autotiling) manual section
• Godot 4 "starter" project that contains all the examples from these docs with the TileSets and terrains set up
• Templates in png and svg format

Contents

• Creating terrain sets (autotiling)
  • Understanding how terrains work
  • Choosing a terrain mode
    • Match Sides
    • Match Corners
    • Match Corners and Sides
  • Setting up a new terrain set
    • Setting up terrain tiles in Paint mode
    • Setting up terrain tiles in Select mode
  • Special cases
    • Animating terrain tiles
    • Using probabilities for multiple tiles with the same bitmask
    • Using alternative tiles for one tile with multiple bitmasks

Why this is here

In 2023, I responded to a request to update the Godot 4 docs section for Using TileSets: Creating terrain sets (autotiling). While I received feedback that the PR I created had been submitted correctly, there wasn't interest in reviewing or merging it. I ended up closing the PR as it was blocking others from making edits that might be more likely to get merged.

I am guessing my PR might not have fit the goals the core team had for these docs, and I have tremendous respect for all of the Godot docs maintainers -- they've done an amazing job in establishing a standard of highly accessible documentation.

For a time, Godot users could still access the content in this original PR on Github as a reference. However, Github seems to have recently changed how the Sphinx (rst) file previews are displayed, so the images are no longer inline. And the images are particularly important for understanding these docs.

As of 5/2024, the official docs have yet to be updated, and I still see almost-daily requests on social media for explanations of Godot 4's terrain sets (particularly what the center bits are for!). So I decided to repost the docs here as a PDF. It is not as accessible as the original format, but I hope it will still be useful.

This documentation was created in Godot 4.0/4.1. There have been minor changes to the UI since then, but the tutorials in this these docs should work the same for 4.2/4.3.

I welcome anyone who wants to use any of the content from the original PR #7789 to create a new PR for the terrain sets section. See the commit for the original rst file and webp images.