Mapping Tutorial (Layers & Attributes Explained)

[Kalm]

Well, I am going to try my best to break down ALL of the Layers and Attributes in a way anyone can understand.

**LAYERS TUTORIAL**

TILES:
Okay, first of all, everyone thinking of trying their hand at mapping should know what a Tile is.  A tile is just a picture or graphic a certain size.  All of the tiles in Eclipse are the same size when you first download and start your first Eclipse map, although their are ways of altering their size but i'm not an expert in that field.

LAYERS:
The layers of a map are ordered as follows:

* Ground
* Mask
* (Mask) Animation
* Mask 2 AKA Upper Mask
* (Mask2) Animation
* Fringe
* (Fringe) Animation
* Fringe2 AKA Upper Fringe
* (Fringe2) Animation

Okay, here's a basic breakdown of each of the 9 layers.  But before we get into those, I want to describe the layers as a whole.  The layers are exactly what they sound like, "layers".  They stack on top of each other to create a whole map.  The Ground layer is the lowest and is always on the bottom of the map while the Fringe2 layer is always on the top.  Oh yes, by the way, dissreguard the Animation layers for now.

GROUND:
The Ground layer is exactly what it says.  It is the "ground" for the map.  Tiles such as grass or dirt can be put on the Ground layer.  The Ground layer is the VERY bottom of the map ALWAYS.  If you try to put solid objects (Ex. a crate) over the grass while still in the Ground layer, you will erase the grass tile and put the object you had selected there instead.  Thus, going into our next Layer.

MASK and MASK2
The Mask layer goes directly above the Ground layer.  So if you want to stack that crate on the grass and not delete the grass tile, you would put it on the Mask layer.  But let's say you want to put a bottle or some other solid object ON THE CRATE, you would wind up deleting the crate tile and replacing it with the bottle tile.  That is what the Mask2 layer is for.  The Mask2 layer goes above the Mask layer while the Mask layer goes above the Ground layer.  Now, so far we have a grass tile in the Ground layer, a crate sitting on the grass in the Mask layer and a bottle on top of the crate in the Mask2 layer.  Not so hard huh?

In BETWEEN MASK/MASK2 and FRINGE/FRINGE2
I've always found it easy to think of it like this:

LAYERS:
Ground
Mask
Mask2
Player Sprite
Fringe
Fringe2

FRINGE and FRINGE2
So what am I trying to say?  I am trying to say that the Fringe and Fringe2 layers go above the player.  What do I mean by that?  Well, i'll make an example.  let's say you are making a wall.  You want to make it seem like the Player is going BEHIND the wall.  So you would put this wall in the Fringe layer.  Fringe layers go above the character so when a character is on the same tile as the fringe layer, it appears as if the player is behind the Fringed tile.  Get it?  Now let's say this wall just happens to have windows.  You don't want a window deleting your wall tile do you?  So you would put the window tile in the Fringe2 layer. 

Now to sum it all up:

SUMMARY

Ground–-Is the lowest layer of a Map.  Best suited for the ground basis of your map.

Mask-----Any tiles you need on top of your Ground layer will go on this layer.

Mask2----Any tile you need on top of your Ground layer AND your Mask layer will go on this layer.

Fringe----Any tile you need on top of a Player's Sprite would go in this layer.

Fringe2---Any tile you need on top of a Player's Sprite AND your Fringe layer would go in this layer.

Not that hard huh?

Now into Animations layers

ANIMATION:
First i'll tell you exactly what they do.  They take a tile and make it blink.  That's it.  Useless huh?  Far from useless.  If you make a river and want it to seem like it's moving, you would put it in the Mask layer first, then choose a different water tile and put it in the (Mask) Animation layer over the water tile you put in Mask.  Now, being that you have one regular Mask tile and one Animation tile over it blinking, dosn't it look like it's moving?  It should if you choose two similar tiles.  They have exactly the same function for the Mask2, Fringe, and Fringe2.  That concludes the Layers Tutorial.

**ATTRIBUTES TOTURIAL**

(COMING LATER)