LDtk, or the Level Design Toolkit, is an open source 2D level editor from the director of Dead Cells. LDtk is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. LDtk 1.5 was just released with several new features and improvements:
Global search
You can now search for any project element using the
CTRL-F
keyboard shortcut (CMD-F
on MacOS). The results include:
- definitions (layers, entities, enums or tilesets),
- worlds,
- levels,
- entity instances.
Optionaly, you may also enable the
searchable
option on supported entity Custom Fields, to filter your entities based on these fields (eg. if you look for a specific item instance or mob type).Rules are 20x faster
This version includes lots of internal optimizations regarding auto-layer rules. Therefore, large projects loading time should be significantly faster, especially if your project contained large levels.
Realtime painting on Auto-layers should also be much faster in most scenarios, thanks to these changes.
A new layer option called “Asynchronous render” can be used to delay the actual rendering of tiles by a few milliseconds after painting. This can be used in very complex or large levels to keep the painting action smooth.
Biomes
This update brings various features that should make rule-based biomes creation easier!
- Create an Enum with your various biomes (eg. Forest, Desert, Snow etc)
- Add a custom Level Field that uses this enum.
- Open the Layers panel, and point your new level field under “Biome Enum”.
- For each group of rules, you may now pick which Enum value should enable this group. For example, you may enable your group that paints snow over your platforms only if the Snow biome is picked for this level.
Random rectangles of tiles for auto-layer rules
When creating an auto-layer rule, you may now render a rectangle of tiles picked randomly among a group of many others. For example, this makes possible the creation of random variations among trees, or other large details.
Custom layers list
You can group your layers using tags, and filter your main layers list using these tags.
Rendering of tiles from nearby levels
There is a new app setting to render tiles from nearby levels, making map transitions much easier to paint!
JSON: extra Table-of-content data
When enabling the “table-of-content” export option of an Entity, you will now get extra bits of informations in the
toc
JSON field:
- world pixel coordinates,
- pixel width and height,
- for each custom fields, if the new “Export to ToC” option is enabled, the corresponding value will also be added to the table of content.
Key Links
You can learn more about LDtk and the new features in LDtk 1.5 in the video below.