Dragontile

Create games with DragonRuby and the Tiled 2D map editor

---

Features

Dragontile supports the Tiled 1.4 JSON Map Format

Import your tiles

• Both embedded and external tilesets are supported
• Tile sprites are preloaded and cached to a render target upfront
• Any tiles not found in the map will be skipped and lazy-loaded on first use

Tile Layers

• All visible Tile Layers are rendered to the grid
• Tiles use static sprites to paint each layer as a precomputed render target, skipping any tiles located off-camera until they enter the viewport for performance

Layer effects

• Background color, opacity values, and tint colors are applied
• Supports parallax scrolling offset layers (Tiled 1.5)

Hot reloading

• The current in-game map will now be reloaded when a change to the map file is detected

Object Layers

• Position objects on the map with Object Layers
• Define a Ruby class to apply entity behavior to an object type
• Set attributes using Custom Properties
• Resolves and caches Object Templates from external JSON files so you can reuse objects across multiple maps

Create boundaries and trigger zones

• Collision detection on tiles that specify collision shapes
• Draw collision object polygons to create boundaries and trigger events using zones
• Set arbitrary points on the map to create entity spawn locations

Designed for Draco

• Object types matching a registered Draco entity class will create an entity and populate it with the Position, Size, Rotation, Sprite, and Visible components from draco-common
• Draco ECS files to support map loading and rendering functionality are added to the project during post-install for easy integration.

External tilesets and object templates

• Resolves and caches external Tilesets and Object Templates
• Share tilesets and metadata between multiple maps
• Create distributable asset packs and package them with Smaug

Tiled extensions

• Enhances Tiled with new tools and actions

---

Installation

If you don't already have a game project, run smaug new to create one.

$ smaug add dragontile
$ smaug install

You will need to obtain a license key from https://smaug.dev/packages/dragontile/licenses/new and configure it for Dragontile.

# app/main.rb
require 'smaug.rb'

def tick args
  Dragontile::Game.configure(args, { license_key: 'YOUR_KEY' }) do
    # Now your world can begin...

    args.state.world ||= HelloDragontile.new
    args.state.world.tick(args)
  end
end

Next, create a World and include Dragontile::World. This will start the LoadMaps, RenderMaps, and ReloadMaps systems for you, so all you have to do is add a Map entity.

# app/worlds/hello_dragontile.rb
class HelloDragontile < Draco::World
  include Dragontile::World
  include Draco::Common::World

  entity Map, map_file: { filename: 'maps/empty.json' }, as: :default_map
end

Start the game with smaug run, and your map should appear.