Better Terrain (Godot 4 plugin) Dual grid TileMapLayer

Quick tutorial for how to achieve a simple dual-grid effect using the Better Terrain plugin for Godot 4. The dual grid video I reference by ‪@jesscodes‬ is worth a watch: • Draw fewer tiles - by ...

[@ksymph]

I just found a dead simple way of making the offset - in the tileset, just select all the tiles and set the texture origin to e.g. -8,-8. That way you don't need to bother moving the whole grid, and it also has the bonus of making textures in the editor line up too.

[@Portponky]

@@ksymph oh, that's a great idea.

[@Portponky]

Okay, I gave it a shot, and it's so much better. I should have done that for the tutorial!

[@Hurtwolf]

Thank you so much!

[@jacobthompson42]

This is so cool! I've been keeping a close eye on the related threads in the /r/godot subreddit so I'm excited that you posted a video about it. I have been using BetterTerrain for a few months and really love the plugin. I'm definitely going to give this a try.

[@DrPhilboBaggins]

I love that you've added this info to an already awesome plugin. Thanks heaps!

[@okie9025]

How do you use multiple tiles in this system? Eg. if I have dirt, sand, and grass tiles, and I want to make them all seamlessly connect to each other.

[@Portponky]

@@okie9025 you can either draw all combinations (15 tiles for one type, 80 for two types, 255 for three, (n^4)-1 in general), however that makes a lot of tiles. I would just put each type on its own layer, which is slightly annoying to use, but uses the fewest possible tiles - 15 per type.

[@MrGold-zn1xo]

Hi Portponky - could you tell me how you can use BetterTerrain set cell with the new TileMapLayer node? And also if any of that affects the threading - because I will need to use threading for my game as the chunks I'm using are quite large. Thank you!

[@Portponky]

@MrGold-zn1xo the latest version of Better Terrain works with TileMapLayer nodes. If you're still using TileMap nodes there's a Better Terrain 4.2 plugin that supports the older versions of Godot. The TileMaps cells cannot be written to from a thread, but Better Terrain has functions for calculating the autotiling on a thread, called changesets. These can be applied quickly on the main thread without lagging the game. See the previous tutorial video for details.

[@MrGold-zn1xo]

@@Portponky For some reason downloading the new version wasn't overwriting my old one, it works now thank you! With the changesets, is it possible to set surroundingcells? I have chunks in my game and I need the tiles at the borders to tile with those on the same tilemaplayer of other chunks (that weren't in the changeset, but are still in the same tilemaplayer). For each chunk I'm identifying which cell belongs to a certain biome and then making a changeset for each tilemaplayer and then calling apply_terrain_changeset on each one when it's ready... I'm not sure if this is the best way to do this either, so If you have any tips I'd appreciate it! Thank you for your work on this extension, it's a great addition :)

[@Portponky]

@@MrGold-zn1xo The changeset will only calculate tiles which you give it in the dictionary. It will take account of adjacent tiles. If you want to stitch together seams, just add them to the dictionary when calculating the changeset. Sounds like you're on the right track.