Prefab instantiation

By setting the Type property of a tile or object in Tiled, KITTY will instantiate the most relevant prefab with a matching name from anywhere in the Assets folder.

Relevance is determined by how much of the prefab path matches the tilemap path.

Tile prefabs

For tileset tiles with a defined Type property in Tiled, a prefab is instantiated at every instance of that tile’s position in a tilemap, unmodified except for rotation based on the tile’s flipping, if any.

Note

When you change a prefab instantiated from a tileset, you need to reimport that tileset.

Object prefabs

Objects with a defined Type property in tiled will instantiate an instance of the most relevant prefab with the same name as the Type property’s value.

The instantiated GameObject‘s name is changed to match the name of the object in Tiled, if any.

For example, a Tiled object with the Name Mega Man and the Type Player will instantiate a prefab named Player, and change the instance’s name to Mega Man, followed by an object ID.

Note

When you change a prefab instantiated from an object, you need to reimport the tilemap.

Tile object prefabs

A tile object is an object in Tiled based on a tileset tile. It inherits graphics and properties from its source tile, and the properties can be overwritten for each object instance.

If the tile object itself does not have an explicitly defined Type, it inherits the Type of its source tile. This way, the object still instantiates a prefab, just based on the tile’s Type instead.

For tile objects, a child SpriteRenderer is automatically created to render the object’s source tile graphic.

For all Collision Shapes on the source tile of a tile object, a child PolygonCollider2D is created as well.

Translation from a Tiled object to a Unity prefab

If the source tile of a tile object is animated, an Animator with a preconfigured AnimatorController is also added to the Renderer GameObject. This is described in more detail in the Animations section.

Position and rotation

Prefabs are instantiated with their origin at the tile or object’s bottom left corner. “Bottom left” is relative to the rotation and flipping, so prefabs have correct rotations and positions.

Prefabs retain their initial rotation when instantiated; the rotation and flipping defined in Tiled is compounded with the initial rotation.

Fun with initial prefab rotation of 60° around the X-axis.

Properties

If a field on a MonoBehaviour attached to the prefab (or any children) is decorated with the [TiledProperty] attribute, the value of that field is set based on a Tiled object or source tile’s Custom Property of the same name – case-insensitive, and stripped for whitespace.

This is described in more detail in the Custom properties section.