Creating a Tileset Mini-Manual

Jazz Creation Station Help Creating a Tilesets Mini-Manual | | Index |

This page will try to help you create your own tileset. Creating tilesets for Jazz 2 isn't a trivial tasks and it's best explained by just doing it and following the steps required to create a tileset. So let's just get our hands dirty and see exactly how a tileset is made. To help us with this, we asked Dean Dodrill (who did the cinematics and some other art for Jazz2) to do his first tileset. We'll show you how to create a tileset and make some images that can use as a base for your tileset as well.
We'll do this step-by-step, with on the left side some explanation of what you must do to create the picture you see on the right. You can click on the name of the pictures (displayed in blue) to "download" them out of the help file. You can them save them to disk so you can edit them for your own tileset. If your computer doesn't ask you where you want to save the file when you click on a filename, you can try to click on it with your right mouse-button and select Save picture as... from the popup-menu.

1 Creating an empty tileset
We'll start off by showing something simple you can start with: an empty tileset with the Jazz 2 Palette and a grid on which to draw the tiles. We've also added some comments to show you how to use a tileset picture like this.
This image ( Stencil.pcx) is a good starting point for creating any tileset. The size of the grid is 32x32 pixels, each square of the grid is one tile.
We recommend you load this picture into your drawing program to take a closer look. If you take a look at the palette you will see that I marked colors 2-15 and 240-255 in a particular ugly color purple to indicate that you should not use this colors. Color 1 is a relaxing shade of purple (the transparent color) and Color 0 is black (because my drawing program did not allow me to change it). You should never use color 0! There are a lot of black colors in the palette which are free for general use.
This picture is the start of any tileset and it's totally done, so let's get on drawing!

Tileset stencil with comments. Stencil.pcx, StencilEx.pcx

2 Creating your tiles
Now that we've got a stencil image to draw on, you can draw your tiles on top of this stencil. And that's what Dean did. You can see he just erased the grid where he wanted to draw something. You should also design your tiles to be tileable (i.e. that they look good when you put them next to each other). If you look at any of the Jazz 2 tilesets you will see this.
Dean also added a purple-blueish shade for the background image on the left side. He added these colors in the "free zone" (black colors in the palette) so that's ok. Most of the image has been drawn using the Jazz 2 fixed palette colors, which is efficient because it saves you from using the "free zone" colors.
You might think "is it really that easy?", well uhmm.. no, but rest assured, anybody who can draw using a paint program can also draw tilesets sooner or later. First you'll be fighting with the palette and having trouble aligning your graphics on a grid, but it's just a question of patience. Practice long enough and drawing tilesets will get easier and easier.
Now that we've drawn a tileset, we'll have to give it a mask, which is what we will do in the next step.

Dean's example tileset. Tiles.pcx

3 Creating a mask
Okay, so now you've got some graphics and you need a mask. What do you need a mask for anyway? The answer is collision. If you use an "auto mask", Jazz will just bump into any pixel on the landscape. But that's not always what you want. For example, if you look at the tileset Dean made for step 2, you see a piece of ground with a flower on it, you want Jazz 2 to hit the ground - not fall through it - so he must collide with that, but you don't want him to run into the flower. So you want the flower to be unmasked.
So how do you create a mask? Simple, you just make a copy of your picture and then erase everything which should be unmasked with the background color, purple. When JCS compiles your tileset he will see where the color of the mask is purple (unmasked) or non-purple (masked).
You will also find that Jazz will run into things like small plant growth you draw on branches or small mushrooms you draw on the ground. In general, your mask should be simple, so that it's easy for Jazz to move around in it and he won't get stuck in small details in your picture.
So what do we see on the right? Dean removed some of the details that Jazz could get stuck in, he removed a bit of the top layer of the landscape so that Jazz will slightly sink into the landscape. Also, the flower is gone, so now you won't bump into it any more.
Note that JCS will not compile a tileset when the image file and the mask file don't have the same dimensions; each tile must have a mask.

Dean's example mask. Mask.pcx

4 Compiling your tileset
We've only done three steps and it's already time for action. Now that we've got the ingredients - an 8bit image of width 320 in the Jazz 2 palette and a mask image with the same dimensions - we're ready to compile this tileset. You can find all about it in the JCS help file, but we'll just sum it up for you anyway. The links below point you to other sections of the JCS help file, when you're done reading each step, return to this page by pressing the Back button.
Before we start, make sure you have your tileset and mask image in the Tiles directory. If you have Jazz2 installed in C:\Games\Jazz2,then your tiles directory is C:\Games\Jazz2\Tiles, etc.

- Now, first bring up the Tile set organizer and press the Add button
- This will bring up the Tile set properties dialog where you can select properties for your new tileset. Type a name for your tileset, such as Dean's example. Select a filename, such as Dean.j2t. Fill in the name of your tile set and mask files, for example Tiles.pcx and Mask.pcx. You can leave the Remap tile set palette unchecked because this tileset is made with the Jazz 2 palette and there is no need to remap it.
  Now press the OK button to acknowledge your selection
- You're back in the tile set organizer where you select your tileset from the list and press the Build button.
- After the tile set builder is done, you should've gotten yourself a new tileset! Bravo!

Okay, you're all set. Your tileset has been compiled and it's ready to be used in your own levels. Just select your tileset from the list in the caption of the tiles view and edit. We at Epic encourage you to make your own levels with your own tilesets and share them with friends and family, put them om your homepage and so on, as long as you do not sell your tilesets or levels.

Retail distribution of tilesets and levels is prohibited without written permission from Epic MegaGames.
For more information read the license.txt in the Jazz 2 directory.

Now that we have the legal stuff behind us, here are the pictures we used in this mini-manual again. Please feel free to use these example pictures as a base for your own work.

> - Stencil.pcx - Stencil image, base image for each tileset

> - Tiles.pcx - The example tileset created by Dean

> - Mask.pcx - The example mask image created by Dean

You should now have everything you need to create your own tilesets and levels. We hope you have as much fun making your levels as we had creating Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
The Jazz Jackrabbit 2 team.