v0.116.0 Lands On Its Feet

A complete 2D engine. Start from a pixel template, bring in art from Aseprite and levels from Tiled or LDtk, and paint square, isometric or hexagonal maps with collision worked out from the art. Bodies collide, turn and join, and 2D lights cast clean shadows. This is everything from the seven betas, v0.116.0-rc1 to rc7.

Start a 2D game

• Pixel Platformer (--template platformer2d): a tile level with slopes and ledges, a player who runs and jumps, and a camera that follows. 🎓 Learn ▸ Build a 2D pixel platformer builds it from an empty project.
• Pixel Village (--template village2d): walk up to someone and press E to talk, with portraits and choices. The dialogue is scripts/talk.lua and a file per character in data/, all yours to change.
• A scene whose camera is orthographic and faces the front opens in a 2D Scene view.

Art and levels in

• Aseprite files are sprite sheets. Put an .aseprite in the project and you get a sliced sheet and a sprite animation per tag, rewritten each time you save. No export step.
• Levels from Tiled and LDtk. Drag a .tmx or .ldtk into the Scene view. Each level becomes a node with a tile layer per layer, an empty node per object (tagged with its class), and one tileset. Tiled's isometric and hexagonal maps come in with their shape.
• A spritesheet dropped on ◫ Tiles ▸ TILESET gets each tile's collision worked out from its pixels: solid squares, slopes that follow the art's top, boxes round small art, and nothing for empty tiles.
• A dropped image lands under the pointer at the level's pixel size, unlit.
• Bitmap fonts (.fnt), .ttc, .woff and .woff2 fonts work anywhere a font goes.

Tile maps

• Isometric and hexagonal. Set a tileset's grid in the ◫ Tiles tab to square, isometric, hex (pointy top) or hex (flat top). Tiles draw in their cells, the cursor picks cells by their shape, and solid cells collide and cast shadows with their own outline. Art taller than its cell stands up out of it, in front of the cells behind. tm:cellAt and tm:worldAt follow the shape.
• A layer grows as you paint past its edge, and resizing never moves your tiles.
• One-way platforms: tick one-way on a tile. node.dropThrough = true falls through one, and tm:oneWay asks whether a square is one.
• Turn and mirror while you paint: , and . turn the brush a quarter turn, [ and ] mirror it.
• tm:path(from, to) finds a route round the walls of a top-down level.
• Tiles a script sets during play collide from the next frame.

Physics that behaves like things

• 2D bodies stand on the floor. They collide in their own plane and no longer sink into or fall through tile floors.
• Bodies shaped like their sprites. A Rigidbody added to a sprite is traced from its art, flips with it, and can be edited corner by corner or set from a script with node:setBodyOutline.
• Moving bodies collide with each other, with their mass, bounce and friction, so crates stack and characters push them.
• Bodies turn. Tick rotates and a crate tips off a ledge and a ball rolls. A stack of crates stands still.
• Fast bodies stop at thin walls.
• Joints. Add Component ▸ Physics ▸ Joint: hinge, fixed, distance, rope, spring, slider, wheel and target, with limits, motors and a breaking force. From a script: node:setJoint{ kind = "rope", to = hook, length = 4 }.
• boxcast and overlapBox answer for 2D bodies.

2D light and shadow

• 2D lights shade normal-mapped sprites and tiles.
• A 2D light can be a sun, and a spot lamp shines its cone in 2D.
• Shadows come from solid tiles only, merged into whole walls, so decor tiles don't cast and the streaks that fanned out from a light across tile floors are gone.
• shadow strength lets a shadow keep some light, and height sets how high a lamp hangs over normal-mapped art.
• Lit particles take the lights near them.

The camera

• A 2D camera's limits keep everything it shows inside the level.
• look ahead leads the player, and rooms keeps the view inside the room the player is in.
• art pixels holds the zoom where every art pixel is a whole number of screen pixels, and Play names any sprite drawn at a different density.
• A followed player no longer wobbles a pixel.
• Skies work through an orthographic camera. A sky shader or skybox image used to fill an orthographic view with one flat colour. It now draws as the same camera would see it in perspective, through the camera's fov, and turns when the camera turns.
• scene.load("level2", { fade = 0.6 }) fades between scenes.

Sprites and particles

• 9-slice sprites stretch without stretching their borders.
• Particles keep their emitter's sorting layer, and a track can collide with the level: bounce, slide, or die on contact.

Editing

• The Image tab has frame holds, tags and a wider onion skin. A marquee dragged in any direction selects its box, and Ctrl+wheel sizes the brush.
• In the Scene view, drag a selected node to move it. A 2D node rotates only in its plane.
• Any type added to a node can be removed with Remove component.
• Tileset and particle edits undo with Ctrl+Z.

Tools

• floptle run and floptle shot take --fps and --frame-jitter to reproduce frame-rate bugs headless.
• A scene param pinned as a number that a script has turned into an on/off switch is named in the Console and by floptle check.

Upgrading

• A 2D box that used to rest half sunk into a floor stands on top of it.
• A tilemap with a Rigidbody collides as its tiles, not as one box.
• A 2D camera with limits stops half a view further in from each edge. If you set your limits inside the level to make up for it, set them back to the level's edges.
• A 2D light with aim it (spot) ticked now shines its cone.
• A tile layer casts 2D shadows only from its solid tiles. Mark decor tiles solid if you want them to cast.
• Bodies already in your scenes stay upright unless you tick rotates.
• Image tab documents with holds or tags are saved in a newer format that earlier versions won't open.