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Editing Tools & Viewport Operations

utiLITI provides a suite of viewport editing tools designed for precise object placement, freeform tile painting, pattern stamping, and automated Wang terrain matching.

The Tool Palette

The primary tools are available on the viewport toolbar and can be activated using hotkeys:

Tool Icon Hotkey Target Layer Description
Pointer Tool V / 1 Object / All Selects, moves, resizes, and rotates map entities.
Tile Brush Tool B / 2 Tile Layer Paints individual tiles selected from the Tileset panel.
Bucket Fill Tool G / 3 Tile Layer Flood-fills contiguous tile areas with the active tile GID.
Eraser Tool E / 4 Tile Layer Clears tile cells on the active tile layer.
Stamp Brush Tool S / 5 Tile Layer Stamps multi-tile patterns and rectangular tile arrangements.
Terrain Brush Tool T / 6 Tile Layer Paints Wang terrain sets, automatically resolving neighboring edge and corner transitions.

Detailed Tool Behaviors

1. Pointer Tool (V)

The Pointer Tool is the primary tool for interacting with map objects and entities:

  • Single Selection: Left-click any entity in the viewport to focus it and load its properties into the inspector.
  • Box Selection: Click and drag on empty canvas space to draw a selection rectangle and select multiple entities.
  • Additive Selection: Hold Shift while clicking or box-selecting to add objects to the current selection.
  • Moving Entities: Click and drag selected entities to move them across the map.
  • Resizing Entities: Hover over the boundary handles (corners and edges) of a selected entity and drag to adjust width and height.
  • Transform Modes:
  • Move: Standard translation.
  • Rotate: Adjust rotation angle.
  • Scale: Proportional resizing.

2. Tile Brush Tool (B)

The Tile Brush paints individual tiles onto the active tile layer:

  1. Select the target Tile Layer in the Layers panel.
  2. Select a tile from the Tileset panel at the bottom of the editor.
  3. Left-click or click-and-drag across the viewport canvas to place tiles.
  4. Right-click or use Alt + Left Click to pick a tile directly from the canvas (eyedropper mode).

3. Bucket Fill Tool (G)

The Bucket Fill Tool performs flood-filling on tile layers:

  • Click any tile cell on the active layer to replace all connected identical tiles with the currently selected tile GID.
  • Useful for rapidly filling large room floors, backgrounds, or water bodies.

4. Eraser Tool (E)

The Eraser Tool clears tile data from the active tile layer:

  • Left-click or drag across tile cells to clear them (sets tile GID to 0).
  • Only affects the currently selected tile layer, leaving other tile and object layers intact.

5. Stamp Brush Tool (S)

The Stamp Brush places multi-tile selections and complex tile patterns in a single click:

  1. In the Tileset Editor or tile grid, select a rectangular group of tiles (e.g. a 3x3 tree or building).
  2. Switch to the Stamp Brush Tool.
  3. Hover over the canvas to see a translucent preview of the entire stamp pattern.
  4. Click to place the full multi-tile stamp onto the active tile layer.

6. Terrain Brush Tool (T) & Wang Tile Auto-Matching

The Terrain Brush uses Wang tilesets to automate natural terrain transitions (such as grass-to-dirt, water-to-sand, or wall corners) without requiring you to manually pick corner and edge tiles:

  1. Configure a Wang Set in the Tileset & Terrain Editor.
  2. Select the Terrain Brush Tool from the toolbar.
  3. In the terrain dropdown attached to the tool, pick your desired terrain type (e.g. Grass, Dirt, Water).
  4. Paint freely on the canvas: utiLITI automatically inspects all 8 neighboring cells and selects the correct edge, corner, inner-corner, or center tile variation seamlessly.

Snapping & Alignment

utiLITI provides several snapping modes to maintain clean grid alignment during level editing:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ [Snap to Grid] [Snap to Pixels] [Snap Division: 1/2] │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Snapping Mode Description
Snap to Grid Aligns entity placement, moves, and resizing to the map's tile grid boundaries.
Snap to Pixels Aligns entity coordinates and sizes to whole pixel integers, preventing sub-pixel rendering blur.
Snap Divisions Allows snapping to fractions of a tile grid cell (1/1 full tile, 1/2 half tile, 1/4 quarter tile) for flexible yet structured alignment.
Clamp to Map Constrains entity dragging and camera panning within the physical boundaries of the map.

Configuration: You can customize snap divisions and grid properties in File -> Settings -> Grid.

Viewport Visual Overlays

You can toggle visual debug overlays from the View menu or the viewport toolbar:

  • Show Grid (Ctrl + G): Renders grid lines across the entire map canvas. Custom line width and colors can be configured in settings.
  • Show Collision Boxes (Ctrl + H): Overlays magenta boundary boxes for all static and dynamic physics collision geometry.
  • Show Custom Map Objects (Ctrl + K): Visualizes custom non-rendered map markers and logic boundaries.
  • Show Map IDs (Ctrl + I): Displays integer entity IDs next to each placed map object.
  • Show Names: Displays entity names directly above objects on the canvas.
  • Show Static Shadows (Ctrl + 8): Previews 2D shadow caster projections in real-time.