Making Map Tilesets

These tutorials will guide you through making different types of custom tilesets for NewerSMBW's map making tool, Koopatlas. The three types of tilesets we will be looking at are Terrain Tilesets, 'Water's Edge' Tilesets (bottom terrain tiles that fade out to simulate it going into the water), and finally Miscellaneous Tilesets, which are everything else you may want to make, such as paths!

NOTE: At the bottom of the page, you will find the tutorial for importing the tilesets into Koopatlas and NewerSMBW, since it's the final step for all the tutorials here.

NOTE 2: this article is being updated in chunks, since doing it as one thing would cause a timeout error, so if you see this, the page is still under construction

= Making Terrain Tilesets = This guides you through making a regular terrain tileset, which are used in most normal cases.

Requirements Before Starting
- Pre-made template for general terrain tilesets, created by Tempus. You can download it here

- Adobe Photoshop

- Puzzle Tileset Editor

Step One: Getting our Tileset Image
The tileset we'll be making will be based off of NSMBW's desert tileset. Firstly open Puzzle. I'd recommend using either the Updated fork, or the Next fork, both will work for what we're doing. Now open the tileset, located in your NSMBW dump's   folder. Then, click on, and save the tileset image somewhere on your computer.



Step Two: Tile Setup
Now that we've exported the tileset image, we can open it in Photoshop. Once it's opened, we can go and open the PSD in the tileset template we downloaded earlier. You will want to open the file named, as that is what we'll be editing. Once opened, you will see this file open in the Photoshop Canvas:



The text on the image is an instruction layer, you can remove it by going over to the layer list, and unticking the folder named. What we will now see is a bunch of ground tiles, and flat outer tiles, styled like the NSMBW jungle tileset. Now what we're going to do is switch back over to our exported desert tileset image, and find the flat ground tiles. In the image below, they are selected in Photoshop, so you can find them easily.

I'd recommend enabling a grid for this next part by going to .



Once you select those tiles, you can press  to copy it, then press   to paste it in the image, on a new layer. The new layer with the copied tiles will be overtop the original layer, so hover over the tiles, select the Move tool, and move them down to the empty space of the tileset image. This will allow us to make a change to the tiles that is needed for the tileset template. You will now want to select the ground fill tiles, which are the middle row of tiles in what we just copied. Then you want to press  to copy, and then press   to paste the new tiles. The new tiles will be on top of the tiles we copied, on layer 3. Before we do anything to the new row of tiles, we need to select the bottom row of tiles, select the Move tool, and move them down one tile, so there will be an empty tile space between the middle tiles and the bottom tiles. Now, move the new middle tiles on layer 3 down to that empty space. You do not need to use the Select tool, as we can just move the entire layer 3, since it is just those tiles. After all this, you should have something similar to the image below. As you can see, there are now two rows of middle tiles.



Step Three: Copying the Four Tile Rows (Flat Outer Ground Tiles)
Now that you have your sand tiles editing like above, it's time to move them over to the tileset template. Before we copy though, we need to merge the layers with the tiles (layers 2 and 3, assuming you copied the first three rows of tiles instead of moving them). both of them, then click  (Right-Mouse-Button), and press. Now, select all four rows of tiles, and press  to copy them, then go to the Tileset Template file and press   to paste it in the image, on a new layer (should be layer 51 if no modifications have been made to the file yet). Then, move the copied tiles overtop the flat forest tileset textures, with the blue, yellow, and green stars. Your tileset template image should look like this now:



You can turn off the grid if you wish, it won't serve any use from here on out.

Step Four: Making the Inner Ground Tiles
Now that we've copied over the flat outer terrain, we can make the inner ground tiles, which is the ground tiles you walk on, like grass. We'll be recoloring the current grass to be more sand-like, instead of making a custom texture, however this guide can still be used for custom textures. The first thing we're going to do is scroll down the Layers list, and select the layer named. Once you've selected on that layer, select on the Select tool, and use it to select the large rectangle of grass at the bottom of the file. The image below shows what tiles we'll be selecting. Make sure you only select the pixels those tiles use, and none of the pixels on the surrounding tiles.



Now that we've selected those tiles, press  to copy the tiles. Now, we will want to create a new Photoshop Document by going to, or by pressing. The new document will need a size of 576x576 pixels. The other options can stay as their default. When created, paste the copied tiles into it, and drag it up to the top-left corner. Now, continue pasting the same set of tiles into the image till you fill up the entire image size. If you selected the tiles correctly, and placed them correctly in the new document, you will be able to perfectly fit 32 of the copied tiles into the document before it is filled. Your document should look like this now:



Now, we're going to recolor it to look more like sand and less like, well, grass. Firstly what you want to do is select layer 1, then scroll up to the top layer, and select it while holding. This should select every layer from layer 1 to 32. Then  on any layer and press , to merge all the layers into one. With the single layer selected, go to, or simply press. This will open a window like this:

We're going to base our color off of the sand on the top of the tiles in the  tileset. To save you the time of selecting the color of the sand with the Eyedropper tool, here's the color code of the sand we'll be using:. Click on the foreground color picker, at the bottom of the toolbar, and set the color code to be that. It should be this color now. If not, change it to be.



Now, with that color selected, we're going to go back into the Hue/Saturation window by pressing. Then we will want to change the color to these values:



Press OK, then go to, and name your pattern whatever you wish. Now we're going to go back to the tileset template document. While the layer  is selected, click on , then in the new window that opens, click the dropdown named  , and select the pattern you just made. Click OK, and the grass tiles will be recolored.

Step Five: Making the Slanted & Curved Outer Ground Tiles
Now we'll be making the slanted and curved outer ground tiles, which are the light and dark shadows filling most of the document. Thankfully, this otherwise hard process has been simplified by a Photoshop Action included with the tileset template download. Simply open the  panel by going to , or by pressing. Now, open Windows File Explorer (or whatever file viewer your OS has) and navigate to where you downloaded the tileset template. Once you're there, double-click on the Photoshop Action file named, and it will go back into Photoshop with the Actions pane open on the right side of the screen.



Click on the one named, near the bottom, but DO NOT press the play button at the bottom of the window yet. There are two more things you need to do before you can press it.


 * Firstly, find the layer with the stars (at the top, named ), and untick it so it will be hidden.


 * Secondly, make sure the folder in the Layer listing named  is opened (arrow next to it should be facing down), or the action will not work. The folder is below the   layer we edited previously.

Now that those two things are done, we can press the play button. Once the action is complete, the template document should look like the image below. If it doesn't, retrace these steps to see what went wrong.



Now it's time to actually add this tileset into Koopatlas! Go to, and save your tileset image somewhere easy to remember on your device. After this, go to this section on this article to add it to Koopatlas and NewerSMBW!

= Making "Water's Edge" Tilesets = todo in part 2

= Making Miscellaneous Tilesets = this stuff below, but reworked a bit to match the style of the other parts

todo in part 3

Step 1: Creating a Texture
First you need a texture &mdash; either one you created yourself, or one taken from another game. The texture must be 768x384 pixels in size; just like regular tilesets, the tiles within it are 24x24 pixels large.

As an example, we'll create a path tileset. We'll start by creating a 768x384 pixel image, and inserting the textures we want. Please note that the area doesn't have to be completely filled.

When you're done, save the image as .png.



Step 2: Koopuzzle

 * Download Koopuzzle from here: https://bit.ly/2Znxi0W
 * Open Koopuzzle and go to.
 * Select your newly created image.

Now you can start creating your tileset!


 * To create an object, press . You can see all objects you've created in the Object List.
 * Now click on  and resize it with + and -.
 * You can also change the Repeat setting to define what should happen when the object is drawn larger than its standard size. Repeat is recommended in most cases.
 * Select tiles to insert into the object by clicking on them in the box above, and insert them by clicking in the area below.
 * When you've created and edited all the objects you need, go to Object Groups and press . You can name this group whatever you like, and drag the objects into it.



Step 3: Import tileset into Koopatlas

 * When you're satisfied with the tileset, choose . Save it under a meaningful name, such as "MountainPaths", in Koopatlas's   folder.
 * Open Koopatlas, click on, and select your tileset.

And done! You can now build your world map with your new tileset!

Step 4: Import tileset into the game
If you export your world map with the new tileset right now, your game will crash because the tileset isn't in the game's files. Here's how to fix that:


 * Open your tileset with BrawlBox or BrawlCrate.
 * Right-click on the  file, and click Export. Export it wherever you like, and give it the same base name as your tileset (so for example, if your tileset was named , name the file  ).
 * LZ-compress the  file. This step is important &mdash; if you skip it, the game will either crash or render the tileset incorrectly!
 * Copy the compressed file to your game's  folder, and as mentioned above, make sure it has the correct name (in our example, it would be  ).

And done! You can now launch your game and admire your beautiful tileset!

= Adding the Tileset into NewerSMBW = todo in part 3