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When these parts match at corners and edges, the toolset will be able to pick and elevate tiles into the correct position for the builder to make an area.
Before we begin, you will need to have some form of organization, and you'll need to learn the terminology. You'll also need to grab some tools.
Basic Organization
With functional basics out of the way, you're ready to start taking down notes for your own tileset.
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Prior to some version of EE, height transitions needed to be integer values. In the current version, they can now be floating point decimals.
Terrain Types
Terrain types are your tile corners. They are the base terrain available in your tileset.
Terrain types are referenced in the SET and ITP file by name, not index.
Terrain types are required.
Crosser Types
Crosser types are your tile edge types. They are the secondary terrain available in your tileset.
Crosser types are referenced in the SET and ITP file by name, not index.
Crosser types are not required. The default crosser type is blank.
Tile Grass
Tile grass is late-drawn dynamic grass added to parts of the walkmesh at runtime.
Tile grass details like color and density are handled in the SET file.
You can specify an override grass texture name in the grass heading of the SET file.
Walkmeshes using surfacemat #3 will paint tile grass.
The whole set can only have a single transition value. You can however make a separate terrain that uses half of the transition height and then mix it with other tiles using the full transition.
In general, a set can only use one height transition at a time per tile.
There are tilesets which use up to 3 per tile. They are more complex, take substantially more work to create, and cannot make full use of edgetiles. Multi-raise tilesets let a builder jump two or more transition increments over a single tile.
Terrain Types
Terrain types are your tile corners. They are the base terrain available in your tileset.
Terrain types are referenced in the SET and ITP file by name, not index.
Terrain types are required.
Crosser Types
Crosser types are your tile edge types. They are the secondary terrain available in your tileset.
Crosser types are referenced in the SET and ITP file by name, not index.
Crosser types are not required. The default crosser type is blank.
Tile Grass
Tile grass is late-drawn dynamic grass added to parts of the walkmesh at runtime.
Tile grass details like color and density are handled in the SET file.
You can specify an override grass texture name in the grass heading of the SET file.
Walkmeshes using surfacemat #3 will paint tile grass.
Tile grass will move like Tile grass will move like a danglymesh node, however its limits are different than all other danglymesh, allowing it to move and bounce back over longer time periods.
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See the SET file writeup for more details.
Doors
Door instances are stored with the tile they are attached onto.
Original content tiles use height transitions of 5 meters. A more reasonable height transition for custom content tiles is usually 2 or 3 meters. But it depends on the intended appearance.
Doors
Door instances are stored with the tile they are attached onto.
In the SET file INI structure, they will directly follow the tile INI structure, and will be referenced as [TILEX_DOORY] where X is the tile index, and Y is the door index.
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To extract material from custom content and to pack your own custom content for sharing, you will need a HAK editor.
Laying out your intended area
Estimating your terrain type needs
The first thing you want to examine is the number of terrains you intend to have in a single area.
Any time two or more terrains can meet on a tile will substantially increase the workload.
While tilesets exist which mix four terrains, it would be best to start with two and only work up as needed.
Commonly used options include Grass, Water, Mountain, and Forest for outdoor sets, while indoor sets have a terrain type per room but are separated by a shared wall terrain sometimes called "solid".
Mixing Two Terrains
Imagine you have two terrains A and B. For each terrain you need one tile with all four corners being the same terrain. For any corner mixed with the other terrain, you need another 4-5 tiles as shown in the diagram below.
While ABBA and BAAB are technically the same pattern rotated, they represent options where the primary terrain is the one in the upper left corner. Imagine you have terrain A which is flat grass, and B which is raised rock. If you want a bridge of raised rock across the grass, then BAAB is the tile you would be making. Whereas if you want a grass path through two raised rocks, then ABBA is the tile you are making. We can think of these as inverse tiles.
Builders will commonly make three variant versions of ABAA, BBAA, and BBAB, but only one version of ABBA and BAAB. Some builders make six variants of AAAA and BBBB. Variation of individual tiles helps reduce repeating patterns in the client view.
With each terrain C or D added, the number of mixing tiles will increase with A, B, C and D. You would need A, B, C, D, AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, and CD.
Mixing Three Terrains
In addition to mixing C and D with A and B, you might also consider mixing three terrains at once. for each terrain C added, you will need 9 more tiles to complete the mixing options.
Having complete mixing options allows builders to keep painting without having to erase a tile to paint another terrain. However, more mixing options always increases the number of tiles needed, and the workload.
Note that this following set finishes the ABC combo, but omits D. So to complete ABCD, you would need ABD, ACD and BCD copies of the following.
Mixing Four Terrains
If you wanted to mix in a fourth texture D with A, B and C so that each corner was another terrain, then you would need 6 more tiles adding terrain D. But, unlike other subsets, you already have all the tile you you need in this mixing type for the whole set ABCD.
So you can see, with just four terrains the workload is building up. Adding terrains E thru Y would substantially increase the workload.
Standard tilesets have usually four terrains. Custom tilesets have tens of terrains with varying mixing capability.
Mixing only two terrains at once can seriously reduce total workload. Not all terrains need to be mixed. And in most cases, a lot of the mixing tiles will never be used in any given area, creating file bloat.
You can also make "graduated" terrains, where terrain B only appears inside terrain A, and where terrain C only appears inside terrain B. With such a graduated terrain system, you can transition from terrain to terrain with every tile, but you will need four tiles to make it to terrain D.
The maximum area size is 32 wide or long. So burning 4 tiles distance to transition over four terrain types might mean wasting some real estate.
Keep in mind that you can also start with max-2 mixing tiles. Build what you need, and then do anything special with tile groups. That method would allow you to skip making most mixing tiles and only make what you personally need.
Estimating your crosser type needs
Crossers are what goes on the edge of your tile and connects it to the adjacent tiles. In original content tiles, these are usually streams and roads outside, while inside they can be corridors or bridges over watery pits.
Like with corner terrains, you need so many tiles to complete a crosser set.
If we imagine that a tile has this structure:
...then to compete a set you need three basic tiles to make a continuous road with a termination.
And to make intersections in your road, you need these two tiles:
Keep in mind that this is ONLY to cover one corner terrain type with one crosser type.
Mixing Two Crossers
You can also mix up to four crosser types on a single tile, just like with corner terrains. Here's an example of two crosser types meeting in the middle, such as a road crossing a river.
Shown below is an early river system subset by Merricksdad.
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Notice in the river subset above, the river does not need to cross the tile at the tile edge center. It can be offset. However, in producing tiles like that, you then need extra tiles to snake the river across the tile, such as those shown with bridges.
Mixing Terrain and Crossers
Now imagine you want your river to empty into a lake. The tiles shown below would be needed to complete that transition set.
Mixing Height Transitions and Crossers
The following chart paints a clearer picture of the needed tiles for any given terrain-crosser mix where there is any height transition A, or where A is actually a different terrain than the blank portion.
But if you want full diagonal raised terrain support, you also need these following tiles.
