2D Tile-Based Concept Art App

Question

I'm making a bunch of 2D games (now and in the near future) that use a 2D, RPG-like interface. I would like to be able to quickly paint tiles down and drop character sprites to create concept art.

Sure, I could do it in GIMP or Photoshop. But that would require manually adding each tile, layering on more tiles, cutting and pasting particular character sprites, etc. and I really don't need that level of granularity; I need a quick and fast way to churn out concept art.

Is there a tool that I can use for this? Perhaps some sort of 2D tile editor which lets me draw sprites and tiles given that I can provide the graphics files.

Answer 1

Have you seen Tiled? I've used it for this very purpose myself a number of times.

From the website:

• General purpose tile map editor with XML-based map format
• Supports orthogonal and isometric maps
• Custom objects can be placed with pixel precision
• Full undo/redo and copy/paste support
• Add custom properties to tiles, layers, objects or the map
• Automatically reloads tilesets when changed externally
• Resize or offset your tile map later as needed
• Efficient tile editing tools like stamp and fill brushes
• Supports input/output plugins to open and save files in custom formats

This program is a fantastic tool for laying out tile-based maps very quickly, with lots of flexibility. When finished, it can even render your map to an image file.

There's also Mappy. Though I have no real experience with this tool, it does appear to have similar features.

Answer 2

I have used Ogmo Editor for this purpose. It's similar to Tiled, but it's simpler hence it has less features.

I was very satisfied with it, but now the version 2 has been released and I haven't tried it yet. Here's a video tutorila for the older version.