Make your first map

In this tutorial you create a project, draw some tiles, turn them into a tileset and paint a small map with it. It takes about fifteen minutes.

You need the Long Lost Editor. Download it for macOS, Windows or Linux.

Note

Shortcuts are written for macOS. On Windows and Linux, use Ctrl where it says Cmd.

Create a project

The editor opens on LostHub, the list of your projects.

1. Click New project.
2. Choose a folder, name the project My Game and save. The editor adds .llproj to the name.

A project is the My Game.llproj file plus the My Game.blobs folder next to it, which holds its images. Keep the two together when you move or back up a project.

A new project already has an empty map called Map 1. It also has a sample tileset called Tiles, which this tutorial doesn’t use.

Find your way around

Open documents are tabs along the top of the window. The + after the last tab opens the file browser, which lists everything in the project.

• Double-click an item to open it.
• New makes a folder, map, tileset, entity, texture or note.
• The ? button at the top right lists every keyboard shortcut.

Draw your tiles

A tileset starts as a picture, called a texture. Make one with room for four 16×16 tiles.

1. In the file browser, click New ▸ New Texture.
2. Name it Ground, keep the size at 32 × 32 and click Create. The texture opens in the same tab.

A new texture has an empty palette, so set colours in the Color panel at the bottom left. Click the colour field to open the picker, type a hex code into Hex and press Return.

1. Set the colour to a brown, for example #8b6240.
2. Click Fill (G), then click the canvas. The whole picture turns brown: four dirt tiles.
3. Set the colour to a green, for example #4f7a3a.
4. Click Draw (B) and draw a grass edge along the top of the top-left 16×16 square.

Clicking Draw or Fill also shows its options, such as a line, rectangle or ellipse for Draw. Eraser (E) removes pixels. Undo with Cmd+Z. Zoom with + and -, or hold Cmd and scroll. Scroll to move around.

Make a tileset

A tileset cuts a texture into tiles you can paint with.

1. Click + to open the file browser, then New ▸ New Tileset.
2. Under Choose a texture, click Ground. The preview shows how it will be cut: 32×32 into 2×2 tiles of 16×16.
3. Click Create.

The tile size comes from the project’s first tileset, 16×16 here. To change it, open the tileset and set Tile Size under Tileset Properties.

The tileset stays linked to its texture: draw on Ground and the tiles update.

Paint the map

1. Click the Map 1 tab.
2. Click Pencil (B) in the toolbar above the map.
3. Point at the tile picker in the bottom-right corner of the map. It opens; click Back and choose Ground.
4. Click the grass tile, then click or drag on the map to paint.
5. Pick the plain dirt tile and paint the rows under the grass. The picker on the right works too.

• Hold Shift and drag to fill a rectangle.
• Hold Shift and click to draw a line from the last cell you painted.
• Eraser (E) clears cells. Hold Alt and click a painted cell to pick up its tile.
• H shows or hides the grid. Home brings the view back to the middle.

A map has no fixed size, so you can paint anywhere.

Export a PNG

In the file browser, right-click Map 1 and choose Export as PNG.

For more options, open the map and choose File ▸ Export ▸ Export As. There you can also save each layer as its own image and scale the picture up to 8×.