1.3.0 -- Multi-worlds preview

Experimental Multi-worlds support!

The new multi-worlds feature is now available as a preview.

Multi-worlds allow you to have multiple distinct worlds in the same LDtk project.

Each world can have its own set of levels using a specific layout. However, they all share the same definitions (layers, entities, enums etc).

IMPORTANT: to use this feature in your projects, you will need to make sure that your importer is up-to-date and fully supports it. Multi-worlds projects cannot be imported using older loaders.

To enable this experimental support, open your Project settings (P shortcut), scroll down to the advanced options and enable Multi-worlds there. PLEASE BACKUP YOUR PROJECTS BEFORE TRYING IT!

When enabled, various new buttons will be available in the UI, like in the World panel (W shortcut).

Rule tiles X and Y offsets

You can now offset the resulting tile(s) of any rules, either using fixed X/Y values, or using random ranges for more variety.
This will make much easier creation of organic elements like vegetation, dirt etc.

Better drop-down UI component

The new DropDown UI component supports:

• Quick searching
• List or Grid view
• Icons
• Colors

Customizable backup directory

You can now customize the location of your backups.

Please note that, to restore a backup, you should use LDtk and not copy files by yourself manually from your File Explorer / Finder.

Collapsable tags

Tags are not behaving like "folders" and can now be open/closed accordingly in UI.

Lists quick search

You can quick search most lists from the interface:

• recent files on the Home screen,
• entities, enums, layers, etc.

Customizable recent files colors

You can now customize colors for all your recent projects on your Home screen.

Better compact mode

Just press TAB to switch between normal and compact UI modes. The reworked compact mode is now even more... well.. compact.

Other changes

• Added "Repeat" option for level background images (thanks to Lojemiru pull request)
• Added "Display scale" option to all custom fields
• Added support for CastleDB icons import.
• Enum tiles can now be any rectangle from the tileset.
• Added quick search to Home
• Added colors to entities in the list from the Entity panel
• If you have a "Tile" custom field in your level, you may now use it as a replacement for the rendering of the level in the world view.
• Added "Specific entity type" constraint for Entity References
• Added a context menu to layers list in the main panel
• Added a context menu on all custom fields to edit their definition
• Added "colored flags" icons to the embedded atlas
• Better pivot editor design
• Sections of the World panel can now be collapsed (world settings, current level properties and level custom fields).
• Fixed the size of Reset buttons in custom field forms
• Fixed entity render update when zooming in/out
• Fixed the "World IID" values that changed randomly in the JSON, if the project isn't in Multi-Worlds mode.
• Fixed a crash when switching to world mode during a rule edit
• Fixed a very old rules bug that prevented Symetric rules to not re-apply in the same grid cell, if it applied there previously.
• Fixed a crash when opening wizard on an improperly defined auto-layer
• Fixed crash when moving a deleted tile

1.2.5

• Added custom user documentation for Entities and Layers
• Entity width and height no longer work as minimal values for resizable entities
• Updated mouse cursor for entity resizing handles
• Removed some useless tooltips in Rules panel
• Fixed a crash when adding a value to an array of Int in an Entity
• Fixed escaping of user docs strings in JSON
• Fixed a crash with specific level background images
• Fixed isolated "collapser" in Entity panel
• Removed the help block at the top of all panels to make more room for content.

1.2.4

• Added a new Table of content to the JSON, which lists all instances of any given entity.
  For example, this is especially useful if you want to have a quick access to the location of all PlayerStart entities in your game without parsing all your levels manually.
  To enable it, just check the "Add to table of content" option of an Entity definition.
• Fixed lags in world view when using the fields render mode "Outlined text".
• Fixed A key when using WASD navigation.
• Fixed opacity inputs (icon, border and fill) in Entity panel.
• Fixed incorrect main value when editing an existing group using Rules Assistant
• Fixed an error with Haxe API when a tileset is not defined in layer definition.
• Fixed the auto-layer assitant resize as you pan.

1.2.3

• Entity definition properties can now be collapsed to give more room to the custom fields.
• Fixed "FixedArray limit reached" crash
• Fixed the wrong error message when duplicating an entity (ie. "You cannot have more than 0 Entity")
• Added a big warning when creating a new project right in the app dir (any user files in the app dir are lost during updates)
• Better warning when saving an existing project in the app dir.
• Changed the way automatic colors are picked for new enum values, entities, intGrid values etc.

1.2.2

• Added an option to use the old-school "opaque tables" visuals for Entity fields (see in the application settings, F12 shortcut)
• You can now pick an "outer" IntGrid value in the rules assistant. This allows to use the assistant to create transitions tiles between 2 specific IntGrid values (eg. grass/dirt)
• Re-designed the JSON online documentation to be way easier to use.
• Updated the application settings window
• Fixed A keyboard shortcut for non-WASD keyboards
• Fixed external links in Release Notes window
• The color of IntGrid values in the Rules Assistant are now shown in the pattern palette, in the lower-left corner of the window.
• macOS builds are now "universal" like the Windows ones. This means that the official macOS release should now install properly on both Intel and Apple Silicon architectures. The downside is that the installer is now larger than before.

1.2.1

• Fixed entity arrows not pointing at their target properly, if the source entity was resizable.
• Better display of hotfixes vs major updates in the Release Notes window
• Fixed position of the window listing all LDtk versions
• Fixed macOS build

1.2.0 -- Auto-layer rules assistant

Auto-layer rules assistant

The new Assistant makes the creation of standard auto-tiles rules super easy!

Fill the layouts on the left using your own tiles and LDtk will create all the rules accordingly. By default, if you don't have all the orientations drawn, the assistant will automatically just use symmetrical rules to fill the gaps.

And if you forget something or want to make a change, you can simply edit the layout again to update the rules automatically.

WASD controls

You can now navigate through your current tool values using WASD keys.

• In IntGrid layers, this will cycle through values,
• In Entity layers, W/S will cycle through values, while A/D will quickly jump between tags
• In Tiles layers, this will navigate in the current tileset. The selection will automatically use any previously "saved selection" to smartly navigate through your predefined group of tiles.

Because of this change, the following keyboard shortcuts were modified:

• Switch to World mode: SHIFT W or ~ (previously W)
• Toggle single layer mode: SHIFT A (previously A)
• Save current tile selection: SHIFT S (previously S)
• Flip horizontaly currently selected tiles: X (previously X or Z)

Entity fields visuals

The visuals of entity fields have been reworked again to increase clarity and reduce cluttering.
However, keep in mind it's always better to not display everything. The less, the better ;)

Arrows

You can now customize the design of arrows used in Point or Entity Reference fields.

Auto-layer rules remapping

TLDR; This new tool makes the creation of variations of Auto-layer rules very fast.

For example, if you've created a bunch of rules that use the IntGrid value 1 to paint "Stone walls" tiles, you may duplicate and remap them to use IntGrid value 2 and, say, "Metal walls" tiles.

Right click on a group of rules in an Auto-layer to Duplicate and remap it.
This new tool allows you to make a copy of these rules, while doing the following operations:

• replace IntGrid values they refer with another ones,
• transpose the tiles they produce to another part of the tileset.

Icons

New useful icons were added to the embed icons atlas, like keys, locks, and various shapes to be used with the 9-slices scaling feature of entities.

Enum tags display

A new option allows to visualize "Enum tags" attached to tiles in the Editor context (thanks to Keith Clark). Just press the new "Show/Hide enums" button near the Layers list.

In the following example, all tiles were tagged with a Material enum (stone, grass, metal etc.) and the result can be displayed right in the editor context.

Custom commands

You can now define custom commands to be executed at various moments (when the project is loaded, saved etc.). These commands can be used for whatever your own production pipeline requires. Here are some typical examples:

• After saving, run a script that parses the JSON and extract all the texts for future localization.
• When pressing CTRL-R, run your game.
• After saving, parse the project JSON and check if all levels are properly connected, from your game logic perspective.

For obvious security reasons, LDtk will always ask you first if you trust the project and want to allow commands from it.

Misc

• You can add user-defined documentation to any entity or level field.
• You can right click on a group of rules to modify the "out-of-bounds policy" of all its rules in a single batch.
• Added nicer default colors for various elements (eg. int grid values, entities, enum values etc.). The palette is "Endesga32" by Endesga (https://lospec.com/palette-list/endesga-32)
• Added a Color blind option in app settings: for now, this will only affect the colors automatically picked for new Entities, IntGrid values, Enums etc.)
• Hold SHIFT to disable snapping when moving levels around in the world view.
• You can now manually enter custom values for Entity pivots.
• Many Load button in the UI will now remember properly their last folder
• Added extra info to the Simplified Export JSON file (level custom fields, identifiers etc).
• Added a new layer option to prevent selections when the layer is not active.
• Fixed entity duplication that broke entity count limits.
• Many UI fixes (thanks to IrishBruse) to remove unnecessary borders and align things.
• Added a "reset" button near any entity/level field that isn't using its default value.
• Fixed duplicate identifiers when inserting a level in Horizontal/Vertical layouts
• Fixed a crash when duplicating a point from an Entity.
• Duplicating a selection containing Entities no longer ignores the limit counts defined for these entities.
• Added support for proper Point duplication for entities that have an Array of Points field.
• Fixed default multilines values that dropped newline characters.
• Fixed the default tile of an entity when one of its fields is a Tile, but it is not set to override the entity tile itself.
• Fixed the Rule editor window when the layer has no IntGrid value.
• Fixed embed icons reloading when the image was resized.
• Fixed useless scrollbar in context menus.
• Fixed Haxe enum importer regex.
• Fixed levels BgColor in JSON not updating when changing project default
• Updated the design of the home.

JSON changes

The following fields deprecated in update 1.0.0 were removed from the JSON in 1.2.0:

• Removed LayerDef.autoTilesetDefUid (use tilesetDefUid instead).
• Removed EntityDef.tileId (use tileRect instead).
• Removed NeighbourLevel.levelUid (use levelIid instead).

Haxe API

• Added definition JSON access to Layers and Entities
• Removed irrelevant entity arrays in layers that have "required tags" or "forbidden tags".
• Fixed an exception with null defs.
• Added pxWid/pxHei to layers

• Fixed a crash on Home screen for macOS
• Fixed path to samples on macOS

1.1.2

Import enums from JSON and text files

You may now import project Enums directly from an external file (previously, only Haxe and CastleDB). This enum will be updated as you edit the file and LDtk will take care of value losses or renamings.

The following formats are now accepted :

• JSON: expected format is

  {
    "MyEnum1" : "a,b,c",
    "MyEnum2" : "a b c",
    "MyEnum3" : [ "a", "b", "c" ]
  }

• Text file: one enum per line. Each line should use one of these formats:
  • MyEnum : valueA, valueB, valueB
  • MyEnum : valueA valueB valueB
  • MyEnum : valueA ; valueB ; valueB

Better imported enums

The sync window for External Enums was completely reworked:

• better UI,
• added support for enums and values renaming.

You can now also import and sync Enums from a Castle DB file (http://castledb.org).

Samples list

For new LDtk users, the samples are now much more visible in the default UI. Feel free to hide them by clicking on the [x] button.

Other changes

• Fixed a crash when pressing Delete key while having no active selection.
• Fixed a crash when duplicating a level containing Entity references.
• Fixed incorrect entity ref description in Entity instance panel.

• Super Simple Export now also creates one CSV file per IntGrid layer.
• You can right click on a folder on the Home screen to create a new project there.
• Fixed IID's values and Entity references when duplicating a level.
• Fixed unexpected fill color for "hollow" Entities that use a Tile as a texture.