Map Editor¶

The Map Editor lets you paint tile-based levels and backgrounds using the sprites you created in the Sprite Editor.

How the map works¶

The map is a grid where each cell holds a reference to a sprite index. When you call map() in your Lua code, the engine draws every tile in the grid at its correct position.

Each tile is 8 x 8 pixels (same size as a sprite)
The map uses the same sprite sheet as the Sprite Editor
Painting a tile on the map means “draw this sprite at this grid position”

Painting tiles¶

Select a sprite from the sprite sheet palette (shown alongside the map grid)
Click or drag on the map grid to place tiles
Erase tiles by selecting an empty sprite slot and painting over existing tiles

Drawing the map in Lua¶

To render the map in your game, call map() inside _draw():

function _draw()
  clear(12)
  map(0, 0)         -- draw the map at position (0, 0)
  draw_player()     -- draw the player on top
end

The x and y parameters control where the top-left corner of the map is drawn. Combined with camera(), you can scroll through large levels.

Map and collision¶

The Lua API can read map tiles with mget(). This lets you ask which sprite index is stored at a map cell and combine that value with sprite flags from fget().

The recommended tile-flag workflow:

Paint your level visually in the Map Editor – platforms, walls, ground
Flag your collision sprites in the Sprite Editor – for example, turn on bit 0 for solid tiles

Read map tiles in Lua and check the tile sprite’s flag:

function is_solid_at_pixel(x, y)
  tile_x = math.floor(x / 8)
  tile_y = math.floor(y / 8)
  tile_sprite = mget(tile_x, tile_y)
  return fget(tile_sprite, 0)
end

There are still no built-in collision response helpers, so you handle movement and overlap logic in Lua. mget and fget give you the tile data to build those checks against the map you painted.

Since tiles are 8 x 8 pixels, converting tile coordinates to pixel coordinates is straightforward:

-- A platform at tile column 9, row 20, spanning 5 tiles wide
{ x = 9 * 8, y = 20 * 8, w = 5 * 8, h = 8 }
-- Equivalent to:
{ x = 72, y = 160, w = 40, h = 8 }

See mget() and fget() in the API reference for details.