Tile Design 101: Building Sets That Fit Together
The fundamentals of tile sets that join, transition and vary, and which layout to pick: 2-terrain wang, 17-piece or side-view platformer.
Good level art rarely comes from one big painting. It comes from a tile set: a handful of small pieces that combine into endless variety while joining invisibly. This guide covers the fundamentals.
The golden rule: edges that join
A tile has to blend with its neighbours on every side it can touch. If the pattern lines up where two tiles meet, a field of them reads as one surface; if not, you get a grid of seams. Raw AI art almost always fails here, which is why Voidless matches every tile edge when it makes a tileset.
Think in sets, not single tiles
One grass tile isn't a tile set. A usable set has:
- A base: the main surface (grass, stone, sand).
- Edges and corners: where one surface meets another (grass to path, land to water).
- Variants: two or three versions of the base, so large areas don't visibly repeat.
- Details: rocks, flowers and cracks placed on top.
Pick a layout
The image generator's Tileset type offers three layouts:
- Top-down, 2 terrains: a 4-corner wang sheet. Each tile's corners are one terrain or the other, so 16 tiles cover every way two terrains can meet. The easiest layout for autotiling paths, shores and fields.
- Top-down, 17-piece: a set with edges, inner and outer corners and a centre. Many engines and level editors expect this layout.
- Side view, platformer: ground for side-on games, with a walkable top surface and a fill below.
Break up repetition
The giveaway of a cheap tilemap is the same tile stamped in an obvious pattern. Mix in base variants and scatter details so the eye can't find the grid.
Transitions
The border between two surfaces is where tile sets succeed or fail. Instead of a hard grass-to-water line, transition tiles (a shoreline, a path fading into grass) let surfaces meet naturally. A 2-terrain sheet gives you these for every combination.
Keep the set cohesive
Every tile should share the same style, palette, light direction and level of detail. Generate the whole set in one go with one Style and Colour Palette.
Test on a real layout
Paint the tiles into a level in the free Tilemap Editor or your engine, and look at a large area. Seams, repetition and awkward transitions only show at scale.
