Tiles, stamps and terrains
Everything you can paint with, and how to pick it.
Select the Ground, Objects or Above layer to see the brushes in the side panel. There are four ways to pick what you paint.
Stamps
Ready-made pieces that go on the right layer and set their own collisions.
| Stamp | Layer | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Grass | Ground | Plain short grass. |
| Tall grass (wild Pokémon) | Objects | Emerald's wild grass. Stands on the grass and stays walkable. Also paints the Tall grass encounter zone; erasing it or painting over it removes the zone. |
| Long grass (wild Pokémon) | Objects, top on Above | 1 × 2: the taller grass of Route 120, with wild Pokémon like tall grass. |
| Sand path, Gravel path, Pavement | Ground | Walkable paths. |
| Water | Ground | Blocks movement. |
| Flowers | Objects | Walkable decoration. |
| Tree, Pine tree | Objects, top on Above | 2 × 3 and 2 × 2. The trunk blocks movement; the crown goes on the Above layer, so trees can overlap like a forest and the player can walk just behind them. Stacked trees overlap like Emerald's forests: where a trunk meets the crown below, they share one tile. Erasing the trunk on Objects removes the top too. |
| Sign | Objects | The sign post. Add a sign person on it to make it readable. |
| House, Small house | Objects | Buildings with a door tile. Add a door to make them enterable. |
| Lab, Pokémon Center, Poké Mart | Objects | Classic buildings from Littleroot and Oldale. |
Terrains
Terrains draw their own borders. Paint a patch and the corners and edges are picked for you as you go, even when you paint next to an existing patch.
- Light grass, Sand and Dirt for outdoor areas.
- Stone floor, Tiled floor and Brick floor for interiors.
The tileset palette
Under the stamps is the full Hoenn tileset, 6,328 tiles from the Generation 3 games.
- Drag across it to pick a group of tiles and paint them as one stamp. The editor switches to the layer those tiles usually sit on in the real Hoenn maps: grass and paths go on Ground, trees and houses on Objects. You can still pick another layer afterwards. Tiles with see-through parts never go on Ground, where nothing is drawn under them and the clear parts would show black. Picking the exact tiles of a stamp, like a whole tree, works like the stamp.
- All / Ground / Objects / Above above the palette dims the tiles that don't belong to that layer, so the ones you need stand out. Groups keep their place, so a house is still in one piece.
- Pinch or Ctrl+scroll on the palette to zoom it. The zoom buttons and reset button are in its header.
- Drag the handle under the palette to make it taller.
- Recent keeps the last brushes you used.
If you imported your own tilesets, they show up as tabs next to Hoenn. See Custom tilesets and music.
Emerald tilesets
Press + Emerald next to the tileset tabs to add any of the 67 tilesets of Pokémon Emerald: every town (Petalburg, Rustboro, Fortree…), every gym, caves, the Pokémon Center, the Battle Frontier and more. Search by name, pick one, and it opens as a new tab, its tiles 16 pixels like the rest.
- Shared: General holds what most outdoor maps use: grass, trees, water, ledges, paths.
- A town's own tileset adds its buildings and details.
- Tiles keep the see-through parts they have in the game, so put pieces with holes on Objects or Above, over ground.
- Like in the game, the top part of tree tops, roofs and tall grass is drawn over people, so the player walks behind trees and buildings.
- Tiles know how they behave in the game. Painting one sets its collision (trees and walls block, paths don't), its behavior (ledges, water, ice, arrow tiles) and, for tall grass, the encounter zone under it. Walkable ground tiles go on the Ground layer by themselves. You can still change any of it by hand afterwards.
They come from the pret/pokeemerald decompilation and are served with DreamMist, so they don't count against your uploads.
Overlapping objects
Each layer holds one tile per square. When you paint a piece with see-through parts, like the edge of a rock, a roof corner or another tree, over a square where a tree, rock or building already stands, the new piece goes on the Above layer over it instead of wiping it out. What you paint last ends up on top, and anything that blocks still blocks. Erasing on Objects removes the stacked piece too.
Small walkable decoration like flowers and tall grass is simply replaced.
To change which one is in front, right-click where they overlap and choose Bring to front or Send to back. Each shows a small picture of the piece it moves. It changes the whole overlap at once, every connected square where the two pieces meet, and ⌘ Z undoes it.
Search and favorites
- Search above the stamps finds stamps, terrains and favorites by name. Tiles in the palette have no names, so they don't show up in search: save them as favorites first.
- Favorites: pick anything, then press the star next to the current brush and give it a name, like Blue roof house. Favorites appear above the stamps and in search. Hover one and click × to remove it. They're kept in this browser and shared by all your cities. Only Hoenn tiles can be favorites, not tiles from imported tilesets.
Random mode
The shuffle button next to the current brush turns on random mode: each cell gets a random tile of the brush instead of the pattern. Pick a few grass or flower tiles from the palette, turn it on, and paint natural-looking fields.
Picker
Press I and click any tile on the map to use it as the brush. It picks from the selected layer, or from the top-most layer with a tile.
Above layer tips
Tiles on the Above layer are drawn over the player, and they never block movement. Use them for:
- Roofs, so the player can walk behind a house.
- Tree tops at the bottom edge of a forest.
- Bridges or arches the player walks under.