Tiled (full name: Tiled Map Editor) is currently the most popular, powerful and flexible tiled map/level editor for all types of 2D games, developed by Thorbjørn Lindeijer in 2008 (written in Java, therefore it's cross-platform). It is identified as an edge tool for 2D game developers to quickly create game maps.
As a free, open-source and general-purpose standalone 2D game map editor for game developers, Tiled does not belong to a single game or game engine. But it can be used in many different game engines, and is suitable for Flash (ActionScript), HTML5, Cocos2d (C++, Lua, JS), Unity (C#), MAC (Object-C), Android (Java), and so on game development languages. Tiled employs the rendering kernel of Qt, comes with a large number of built-in game map modules, provides a lot of demonstration projects, supports for rapid editing of game map, and is very easy to use for both novices and veterans.
Tiled supports square, diamond and regular hexagon brick graphics, which can piece together into three kinds of game background maps with different visual effects. The map stitching methods it uses (the implementation of tile map technology that covers the background images of almost all game types) are the same as those of Super Mario Bros., Contra, Battle City, The Legend of Zelda, StarCraft, Civilization, and many other well-known games. For example, you can add things to a map and set their attributes; divide a map into several different layers, which supports multi-layer map and colliding layer information. In addition, Tiled provides some additional functionalities. For instance, adds trigger areas and objects; adds tile properties needed in the code to determine the brick tiling type; adds property values for each map; and supports multiple export formats for map background (stored in the TMX file format).
Key Features
- General purpose tile map editor with XML-based map format
- Supports orthogonal, isometric and hexagonal maps
- Custom (rectangle, ellipse, polygon and image) 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, fill and terrain brushes
Related Links
- Tiled Online Documentation
- Tiled Official Forum
- Tiled Video Tutorials made by GameFromScratch (YouTube)
Download URLs
| License | Version | Download | Size |
| Freeware | Latest |  (mir) |
n/a |