Creating Multi-level Tilemaps: Action RPG in Unity Tutorial #4.5

Tilemaps can seem pretty straightforward... until you try to add more levels. Organizing layers and swapping colliders can be a lot to figure out at first. So in this video we look at how to get your layers setup and write a script to toggle out colliders so the player can climb mountains, and our world can feel a little more... vertical.
This video works as a standalone tutorial, but it is also part of a beginner-friendly series where we create an Action RPG in the style of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
If there is enough interest, the next Tilemap video will look at animated tilesets so that we can make water that flows around the edges of our mountains.
RELEASE SCHEDULE
I'm planning to release one video a week until the series is complete. If you'd like to help out a little studio to speed up this process, feel free to give me a Super Thanks, check out my patreon account, like this video, or leave me a comment.
ASSETS USED
Assets used in this video are from PixelFrog's "Tiny Swords" asset pack. You can find the asset pack on itch.io :
pixelfrog-asse...
🔗PATREON LINK🔗
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🎹 MUSIC 🎹
Town Music
Night Run Studio
from the Willard Soundtrack

[@PaalAas]

Great vid like usual. Keep up the good work!

[@NightRunStudio]

Thanks!

[@redgen6485]

Aren't you disabling collisions for everything? If so, looks like any enemy/NPC will be able to walk through walls as soon as the player goes up the stairs.

[@NightRunStudio]

The enemies will just have to follow the same rules as the player. That’s where the boundary comes into play-you still have a boundary around the mountain, just not on top of it. (Though admittedly, enemies won’t be able to toggle this themselves, but that’s pretty common in action RPGs).

[@boxbrain]

Great video, more of this!

[@NightRunStudio]

Thanks! Is it tilemapping stuff specifically that you want more of, or just action rpg stuff in general?

[@10706BND]

@@NightRunStudio I cant speak for @boxbrain but me personally like just the RPG stuff. Doing different tile mapping is helpful and it is interesting how your doing the levels. But I am going to be curious on the questing, item equipping etc. I am using the Pawn instead of the knight because I want to harvest wood etc. and I want to be able to switch weapons.

[@NightRunStudio]

As long as people keep watching, I’ve got lots of ideas. Next I want to add a stat system, and then in the near future I want to add a ranged weapon. We’ll see what people want next after that.

[@boxbrain]

@@NightRunStudio ​​⁠I like RPG stuff in general, but I more specifically resonated with developing a system for building pseudo 3D worlds with tiles. I think few games have taken this to its full potential and I think this will become a more well-understood subject as more people make indie games with tiles and pixel art. The more content we have about different approaches of solving this problem, the more we can give gamedevs a head start on building complex worlds. I previously made a video on 2D houses with multiple floors.

[@10706BND]

@@NightRunStudio oh I like the idea of a stat system. That will be exciting!

[@kamm3021]

Cool, thanks for working on this series it's very helpful

[@NightRunStudio]

Thanks for the comment! Always glad to hear the vids are helpful.

[@10706BND]

This was interesting to learn. I will saw, I found that going back and just going over the mountain and the grass sprites with the same sprites that are under it made more sense. I know its more tedious but it stopped the confusion of adding an alpha layer for me.

[@NightRunStudio]

Thanks for sharing the idea. Different approaches will work better for different people, so it's nice to hear how others are addressing this issue. Good luck with your project!

[@10706BND]

@@NightRunStudio I just wanted to add. I Made the sorting laying a public variable in the code. This way you can adjust it for different heights. It was causing problems moving the player to different levels. when you were going up 3 or 4 tiers since the script just allowed it to do 10 to 15 then back to 10.

[@NightRunStudio]

That’s a good idea! I didn’t want the video to be too long, but it might have been nice to show how to expand more. Another way would be to further change the sorting order to higher numbers for each new layer. But your method sounds solid!

[@10706BND]

@@NightRunStudio personally for me, especially for learning videos, I dont mind it being "long" i mean a lot of the time im watching and then rewatching, pausing etc. I get the format your going for and I dont mind it. But i dont think it will hurt if you go to 15 mins. I think you might find others enjoying it as well.

[@NightRunStudio]

@@10706BND That's helpful to hear. I often find that my more complex videos get fewer views, but at the same time, I would like to build an audience that is interested in slightly more complex approaches as well. Good to know those people are out there!