How to stack, block and dye tiles – Tutorial

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We can stack tiles in order to change their passability. Most flexible are tiles, which are passable, since you can already fully control their passability as you please. Some tiles are partly passable only. If you stack tiles, the impassable parts will be added together. Knowing this, you can use passability of different tiles to improve your game:

If you stack tiles like above, the stairs will only be passable from the top. All you have to do then is to place an invisible door or floor switch on the top to give your game the necessary functionality.

Keep in mind, that only different tiles can be stacked for now. Imagine every tile on each tileset as a tile of a different type. If you drop a tile to a location and this kind of tile already exists there, the old tile in the stack will be automatically deleted. Since this behavior is able to destroy structures, deWiTTERS is thinking about to allow multiple tiles of the same type in the stack for the future.

There is some kind of tile priority. In general a tile of a previous tileset has a lower priority as a tile of a subsequent tileset. That means e. g. that we are not able to place the “Inquisitor ground” border tiles from my example on the top of the stairs of the “REFMAP indoor” tileset. These borders will be always placed below them. Unfortunately, the rule that subsequent tilesets have a higher priority is not general. Therefore, you have try it out how the tiles of your choice behave. Test them carefully, because some tiles even have a higher priority than your hero and floating in the air!

If you figure out, how different tiles can be stacked you can use this knowledge to even change the appearance of translucent or shadow tiles like the ones of the “REFMAP buildings” tileset:

For this I used tiles of the “REFMAP snow ground” tileset underneath the glass/ice tiles in order to brighten them up. If you drag a tile on a stack, the designer will try to place it at the higest position in the stack – at least if the tile priority of your tile allows this. You can use the same technique, to darken shadow tiles by just stacking them.

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