I was always under the impression this program was a level editor made primarily for use with for the author's Clean Game Library [1], a game engine for a functional programming language named Clean [2]. I haven't used either, but maybe people into functional programming will be interested in studying a working game engine made in a functional programming language back in 1999? [3]

As for interesting features the program offers on its own… it has a pretty decent integrated graphic editor for tilemaps [4], and uses a template language for defining the output format instead of providing a generic parsable file format [5]. It also appears to abstract away layers by making each tile in your map consist of a "front," "middle," and "back" tile [6]. In general, it seems like a more old-school version of Tiled, and may be useful for people developing for/on older systems that want a very lightweight tilemap editor.

For people used to programs like Tiled, though, there's probably no compelling reason to switch to this tool. The lack of a working undo function in the map editor could be a dealbreaker, for one.

[1] http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/index.php

[2] http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Clean

[3] http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/

[4] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/drawing.html

[5] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#CreateTSD

[6] http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/tutor.html#MapEditor

See also http://www.mapeditor.org/ which is another good software in that space.

Yea my first thought was "is this any better/worse than Tiled?" If you are a Unity user you should also check out Tiled 2 Unity: http://www.seanba.com/tiled2unity

I maintain a library for Tiled in the Monkey X language. https://github.com/bitJericho/bit.tiled

Having used this software, it's super nice and easy to use / bring into a custom engine if needed.

Honestly this one appears to be the best option in this space currently. Regular updates and upgrades too.

I remember watching Notch do a ludum dare and actually use paint.NET as his level editor.

Each color can be set to a tile, and you can read in the bitmap easily to load a level. A fun way to quickly crank out maps.

Similarly, I once made a game with vector-based levels and just used Inkscape as the editor.

This might be the perfect application of Inkscape. As programmer, you can edit XML model and add data to your objects. You can also write Python plugins to integrate into your asset pipeline.

I used it to draw art which was converted to bitmaps, define polygon shapes for Box2D bodies, define joints between shapes (rope/spring/hinge), select static/dynamic properties, assign mass/restitution/friction...

I use Tile Studio as my only sprite and map editor for 2D platformer development (first in C, then C++, now Lua/Love). The ability to define my own output format instead of having to deal with somebody else's XML is a killer feature for me - a primary reason I've previously tried and discarded Tiled.

You can define your own output format? Hot damn, I'm sold. It took a long time to get Tiled parsed, especially since I needed additional features it didn't have.

And that was years ago, so I wasn't looking forward to going through that process again.

I wish more software in general allowed you to freely define your output format.

I wish there was strong, open source html5 tile editor

I think that one could possible evolve from http://www.piskelapp.com/ in near future; piskel already has a simple "Seamless drawing mode" option and developer seems to be open for ideas.

There's a guy who remade pokemon (yellow) in the browser and also a tile editor for it I forget who but it was pretty slick. I think he was a designer.

I always use pyxeledit, cheap, professional, and works on mac and PC, and great for animations

pyxeledit.com/

PyxelEdit is really good for creating graphics (sprites and spritesheets). It's so simple and intuitive, makes it easy to focus on art and stay creative. It can be used for making maps, but it's hard to compete with TilEd, which supports hex maps, vector zones for triggers and other meta-data.

He also worked on this http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_C...

Is that correct: September 26, 2012 last update?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

If i̶t̶ ̶a̶i̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶ it's on Sourceforge, don't fix it

Related 2D art tool on HN 3 years ago: Sprite Lamp

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696691

edit: semi-freshly re-written in C++ according to the blog

It boggles me that a project hosted on SourceForge that hasn't been updated in 3 years and is in no way relevant lands on the front page of Hacker News...

I upvote lots of articles for the comments, to keep a reference.

(A good way to find the best open source product for X in the world is probably to post a link to a bad product for X here.)

so I take it your not going to use this with your DarkBASIC projects ?

This is of great interest to me, because I have been meaning to do a small project with Lazarus, and this open source project is written in Delphi, so it may be a viable contender for the lab-bench project I'd been planning ..

...But is it better than Tiled and Aseprite?

Nice. Works on the Mac via Wine.

I have little trust in anything from SourceForge, it may look good but it's tainted by being on SourceForge so I wont touch it. Sorry

https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut... https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...

Thanks for the link, I am glad they are turning it around.