mod_rpg_editor/docs/en.md

RPG Map Editor — painting tile maps and placing events

The RPG Map Editor edits the tile maps of the RPG engine while the game runs: the three tile layers, walls and passages, the player's start, random battles and the events — characters, signs, doors, items to pick up. Saving updates the map in the game at once, and Play walks it.

It opens from the tool box (the hammer on the toolbar) as RPG Map Editor, on the map the player is on.

An edit and its result in the game

The elder's house of RPG Plus before the edit:

In the editor: the Appearance tab, the merchant's sprite, Place NPC, a click on a free cell. The new event is selected on the Events layer and its properties are on the right:

After Save (Ctrl+S) the merchant stands in the house:

His dialogue and behaviour are set in the event's properties: a scenario, a condition, a trigger.

The layers and tools

• Back, Main, Front — the tile layers. Back and Main can block walking with solid tiles; Front is drawn over the characters and never blocks.
• Collision — painted over the tiles: Wall (always blocked), Passage (always walkable) or Auto (from the tiles).
• Events — click to select or drag, double-click an empty cell to add, Del to delete.
• Pencil, Eraser, Fill; the right mouse button erases, Alt+click picks a tile, keys 1–5 switch layers, B/E/G the brushes.
• Undo/Redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y), the grid, zoom (Ctrl+wheel).

The tabs on the left: Tiles (the palette of the map's tileset, whole objects such as a house or a tree can be stamped in one go), Characters (characters with combat stats, placed as enemies), Items (placed as pick-ups with a count) and Appearance (every sprite of the loaded mods, placed as NPCs).

The right column holds the map's properties: its name key, tileset, size, zoom, ambient light and atmosphere, the spawn point and facing, and random battles (every ~N steps, the enemy groups such as slime; wolf,slime).

Top-down and isometric

The editor draws the map the way the game does. The view picker in the toolbar switches the preview only; the map data stays the same. The house in the isometric preview:

The game's own view is set by the collection setting tile.renderer (topdown or isometric); --editor-renderer=isometric opens the editor with the isometric preview.

Whose files are written

• The map itself is saved into its maps/<id>.json.
• Events go into the map's own events file in the same mod (map_events/<map>/…). Events that other files or other mods add to the map are shown faded with dashed frames and are never rewritten; their ids cannot be reused.
• + next to the file list makes a new map in the selected mod; after saving, the game knows it as a scene.
• Only mods installed as folders can be written to.

If something goes wrong

1. Play says the game does not know the scene. The map needs scenes/<id>.json in its mod.
2. An event cannot be selected. It belongs to another file or mod (dashed frame).
3. An NPC does not talk. Its event has no scenario, or its trigger is not the action key.
4. Saving changes lines you did not touch. The editor writes the files in its own order and adds default values of events, so a diff can show more than the edit.