RPG Crisis Community Forums: Understanding and Using the Canvas

However before we begin let’s make it so we can actually see our tileset.



At the very bottom of the screen there's a set for 4 buttons, Zoom, Zoom In, Zoom Out and Wall Judgement.

Zoom - Allows you to select a certain zoom percentage which are 25%, 50%, 100%, 200%, 400%, 800% and Auto. Auto will select the best zoom percentage for your resolution.
Zoom In - Allows you to zoom in on your image.
Zoom Out - Allows you to zoom out on your image.
Wall Settings - Will display the walls for each tile.

Now let’s go back to setting up the wall settings.

As I stated before, you have to set the wall settings up for each tile, we can either do this tile by tile or select a group of tiles by dragging our mouse from one tile to another while holding down either the left or right mouse button. First however click the "Wall Settings" button, so we can see the walls.



As you can see in the image I've selected the top part of one of the hills. The red box will create a square/rectangle around the selected tiles so you know what tiles you’re working with. Now let’s set the wall settings up. We want to make it so our character can walk on those tiles, would be kind of silly to watch our character fall through it over and over again. So what we need to do is add a wall to the top part. Under Wall Settings we have 4 arrows pointing inward into a square, if you’re only adding walls for one tile the tile image is shown, for multiple tiles its left blank. We also can select All walls which will make all four sides a wall. Likewise we can select no walls to remove any previously set up walls. Don’t worry about the Change Health during Contact box; we'll get to that later. Now before I go on I'm going to try and explain walls as simple as I can.



Let’s say we have a box as represented in the image above, the box has no walls, just an outline where a wall could be. That means anything could pass through any of the four walls. Now let’s add a wall to the top of the box.



Now our box has a wall at the top meaning if anything attempts to pass through at the top it will get stopped by our wall. If we wanted nothing to get by on the sides we would add a wall on the sides as well.

When adding walls think of it like the box scenario above. If we add a wall at the top our character will be able to stand on the tile. If we add a wall on the left side our character will bump into the tile when attempting to go through with it, same if we add a wall on the right side. If we add a wall on the bottom our character will either hit the wall when jumping off if our character jumps high enough pass above and be on top of the tile.Now back to adding walls to our selected tiles. Let’s add the top wall so our character can walk on it.



As you can see a red rectangle is at the top on our selected tiles meaning we have a wall there. Now let’s add a wall to the sides.



Now our selected tiles have walls on the top and on both sides. Keep messing around with the wall settings until you get the hang of it.

Remember, when setting up the wall judgement keep your character's size in mind. If your character's 2 tiles wide spaces between platforms should be 3 tiles or more. Why 3 you ask? Let me show you.

*This tutorial does not cover adding animations



As you can see my character is 4 tiles wide meaning there needs to be 5 or more tile spaces between platforms if I want him to fall if he misses the next one or jumps to soon..Etc.



The above image illustrates my point. The left is from my sample game. My character seems to be floating in the air, on the right is from the canvas setup with grid lines on. My character doesn’t fall through the space because he’s touching the top wall on the left platform and the left wall on the right platform. Refer back a couple images to see the wall setup. So how do we fix this? Easy, we change the wall judgement to suite our needs.

Go back to the Tile tab and select the ends of our tile.



Then select No Walls to remove all 4 walls, do this for both ends, you should be changing 4 tile's wall judgement. It should now look like this.



Now you’re thinking, "Now my character can't stand on the edge of the platform!” That’s where you’re wrong



As you can see my character is standing on the edge of the platform on the right. I then moved a little bit and my character fell off. Depending on your character's size you might have to make additional changes or smaller changes.

(Editors note: This tile wall removal is unnecessary to get the character to fit through a hole, it can be fixed using the animation's Collision Detection boxes. This is explained in further detail in the up and coming "Properly setting up Collision Boxes." Tutorial)