Manual: Loading from a Template (side-view animations / top-down animations / side-view tiles / top-down tiles)

[Moonling]

About this manual

This manual explains loading from a template in ACTION GAME MAKER. Hand it a single sheet image drawn in a fixed arrangement and it registers animations or tiles in one go. It covers all four cases together: two kinds of animation (side view and top-down) and two kinds of tile (side view and top-down).

How template loading works in ACTION GAME MAKER

Instead of registering assets one frame at a time, or configuring tile terrain one tile at a time, you hand over “a sheet drawn in this arrangement” and the settings you need are created for you.

What you want to make	View	Sheet format	Where you load it
Character animations	Side view	Row = motion, column = frame (an ACTION GAME MAKER format)	“Sprite Animation” in object editing
Character animations	Top-down	RPG Maker MV/MZ character sheets	“Sprite Animation” in object editing
Map tiles	Side view	ACTION GAME MAKER format (12 across × 4 down)	“Tile Settings” in map editing
Map tiles	Top-down	RPG Maker A1–A5 assets	“Tile Settings” in map editing

All four share the following.

• Registration is a single operation. If you do not like the result, one Ctrl+Z undoes it.
• You can only pick images already imported into the project (ones under res://). Import outside images as assets first.
• The defaults are already switched to match the view type (side view / top-down). Import tiles in a top-down project and the dialog opens with the RPG Maker format already selected.

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Animations: side view

How to open it

1. Open a character in object editing and select the “Sprite Animation” tab.
2. Press “Load from template” and choose “For side view”.
3. Pick the image and the settings in the dialog, then confirm.

For an object with no animations yet, “Load from template (setup + register animations)” on the empty state does the same thing. That covers creating the AnimationPlayer and AnimatedSprite2D as well, all in one step.

The sheet format

• One row is one motion; the horizontal direction is the sequence of frames.
• Draw your assets facing right. Left-facing animations are not created. The engine handles mirroring, so supplying only the right-facing version gives you both directions.
• Empty frames are skipped. Motions can have different frame counts — just leave the right-hand side of the row blank. If a whole row is empty, that motion is not created.

Template types and row order

There are two, “Minimal” and “Parkour”, and fixed names are assigned from the top row down.

Row	Motion	Loops	Minimal	Parkour
1	Idle	Yes	○	○
2	Move	Yes	○	○
3	Jump	No	○	○
4	Airborne	Yes	○	○
5	Damaged	No	○	○
6	Shoot	No	○	○
7	Move start	No		○
8	Move end	No		○
9	Air jump start	No		○
10	Air jump	Yes		○
11	Air jump end	No		○
12	Landing	No		○
13	Down	No		○
14	Crouch	Yes		○
15	Sliding	No		○
16	Shoot (diagonal)	No		○
17	Forward roll	No		○
18	Dash	Yes		○
19	Grab	Yes		○

The row order cannot be rearranged. Choose “Minimal” for a sheet with only 6 rows drawn, and “Parkour” for one with all 19. Choosing “Parkour” for a sheet without enough rows gives you “The number of rows in the template does not fit within the image.” and nothing is imported.

The settings

• Image: the sheet to import. “From Image List…” opens a list with thumbnails, favourites and search.
• Prefix: characters put in front of the animation names. Enter player and you get names like player_idle. Use it when importing a second character into the same object (leave it empty and the names collide, so a number is appended).
• Template: choose “Minimal” or “Parkour”.
• Width / height and columns / rows: the size of one frame. Move either the width or the column count and the other follows. “1 frame: 32 x 32 px / columns: 8 / usable rows: 6” appears under the sheet — line things up against that.
• FPS: the playback speed applied to every animation. You can tune them individually after importing.
• Collision adjustment: with the sheet preview as a backdrop, you can fit the wall collision, hit collision and attack collision right there. Clicking a frame on the sheet makes that frame the backdrop.

What importing creates

• Animations are registered in the template’s row order (named idle, move, jump and so on).
• Each animation is assigned to an animation set automatically. Only the left and right directions are populated (a side view never faces up, down or diagonally).
• The collisions you fitted in the dialog go in as the base collisions.

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Animations: top-down (RPG Maker format)

How to open it

1. Open a character in object editing and select the “Sprite Animation” tab.
2. Press “Load from template” and choose “For top-down view (RPG Maker format)”.

The sheet format

RPG Maker MV / MZ character sheets can be used as they are.

• Standard sheet: an image with 8 characters laid out 4 across × 2 down. Click in the dialog to pick which character to use.
• Single-character sheet ($ format): the whole image is one character. Tick “Single-character sheet ($ format)”.
• One character is 3 columns × 4 rows, and the rows mean what they do in RPG Maker: down, left, right, up, from the top.

The settings

• Image / From Image List… / Prefix: the same as for side view.
• Characters to import: click on the sheet to select (one at a time).
• Walk FPS / Stepping FPS: the speed of walking and of idling.
• Run speed multiplier: how many times the walk FPS the run animation plays at.
• Generate attack motions (step-in): also creates attack animations that step forward.
• Create diagonal attacks: reuses the sideways frames to also create attacks in the 4 diagonal directions. Use this when you want attacks in 8 directions.
• Show weapon during attacks: imports an official weapon image and shows it only during attacks. You can choose the weapon and the motion (swing or thrust).

What importing creates

• Walk, run, idle and stop are created for all 4 directions. Enabling attacks adds attack (with collision) and attack (without collision) on top.
• Walk, run and idle play ping-pong as “centre → left → centre → right”; stop is just the centre frame.
• Against an 8-direction engine, the diagonals are handled by the sideways animations (if you created diagonal attacks, the diagonals get their own animations for those).
• Attacks run at 0.25 seconds per frame and include a step-in movement. Set the weapon motion to “thrust” and the attack collision is reshaped to match the weapon — half the width and twice the reach.
• Because artwork for facing up and down actually exists, mirroring is not used (the big difference from side view).

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Tiles: side view (ACTION GAME MAKER format)

How to open it

1. Open a map in map editing and select the tilemap.
2. Press “Tile Settings” on the bottom panel (with a TileMapLayer selected you can also open it from “Tile Settings” in the Inspector).
3. Register a tile image with “Add…” or “Add from Image List…”.

You can also bring in and register the bundled tile assets from “Import official assets”.

The format

• An ACTION GAME MAKER autotile is laid out 12 across × 4 down.
• This format registers the source image as a single tile as-is, so importing finishes on the spot.
• When “Auto-configure autotile” under “Import settings” is on, images that match the format are set up as autotiles (terrain). Images of a size that does not match are registered as normal tiles.

Connection Pattern Template

The autotile system is created by connecting tiles placed in predefined positions according to their connection relationships.

Connection Pattern Diagram:

You can create your own autotiles by drawing the tiles according to this connection pattern.

Connection pattern overlaid on an official asset tile, and an example of the actual layout:

Automatic setup from the file name

Put a fixed prefix on the file name and the import settings are matched for you.

File name	Meaning	What is set automatically
AT_B…	Base autotile	With collision, origin at (0, 0)
AT_C…	Cover autotile	No collision, origin dropped half a tile (for drawing on top)

A message appears when the automatic setup fires, so you can change the settings right there if that is not what you wanted.

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Tiles: top-down (RPG Maker format)

How to open it

Import from the same “Tile Settings” as for side view. In a top-down project the default autotile format is the RPG Maker format.

The format and automatic detection from the file name

The format is chosen automatically from A1–A5 in the file name (it only fires on A + digit with non-alphanumeric characters either side, as in Outside_A2.png).

File name	Format shown	Contents
…A1…	RPG Maker A1 format (water / animated)	Animated autotiles such as water
…A2…	RPG Maker A2 format (floors)	Floor autotiles
…A3…	RPG Maker A3 format (walls)	Wall autotiles
…A4…	RPG Maker A4 format (walls and roofs)	Wall and roof autotiles
…A5…	(no autotile)	Registered as normal tiles (no collision)

What happens when you import

• For the RPG Maker format, a PNG expanded into the 47 tiles (12 across × 4 down) is generated automatically. It goes into res://materials/tiles/generated. Images from that folder may show up in your asset list — do not delete them.
• A1 animations play at the same 0.5-second interval as RPG Maker.
• If the expanded image would be too large (over the 16384 px texture limit), it is split across several tiles automatically.
• Generation can take a moment. If it does not appear in the list right after importing, wait for the import to finish (it registers itself once done).

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Settings shared by both tile types

“Import settings” under “Tile Settings” is shared between side view and top-down.

• Tile size: 24 × 24 by default (it uses the value from the project settings). A tile image must be a multiple of this size to be registered.
• Auto-configure collision: turn it on and collision is set on imported tiles automatically. On autotiles, the collision matches each tile’s shape — corner, edge, interior.
• Auto-configure autotile: turn it on and images matching the format are set up as autotiles (terrain).
• Texture origin: shifts the drawing position. This is the setting used to drop cover autotiles (AT_C) by half a tile.
• For normal tiles (images that are not autotiles), only the parts that have artwork become tiles. Transparent margins do not.
• Registered tile images can be “Reimport”-ed or “Delete”-d from the list. Deleting removes the tiles, terrain and generated images made from that image all together.

You can also drag an image straight from the image list dock into the tile palette. Automatic detection from the file name applies there too.

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Things to watch out for

• Side-view animations assume right-facing artwork. Feed in left-facing artwork and the facing will be reversed in game.
• The side-view template has a fixed row order. A custom arrangement with “Move” on row 1 cannot be loaded. If you want fewer rows, use “Minimal” (6 rows) and leave the rest blank.
• Top-down imports one character at a time. To bring in several from a sheet of 8, change the prefix and repeat as many times as you need.
• Importing twice with an empty prefix appends a number to the names. You end up with names like idle_1, which is hard to read — give the second character onwards a prefix.
• Make tile images a multiple of the tile size. Images that are not a multiple, or that are smaller than the tile size, cannot be registered, and a message says so.
• The contents of res://materials/tiles/generated are generated automatically. Delete them by hand and your top-down autotiles stop displaying.
• Assets may not be loadable immediately after importing them from the official set. Wait a moment for the import to finish and they register (the same goes for imports that use a weapon image — they retry automatically once it is done).
• For how to draw the templates themselves, “Open the template help in an external browser” in each dialog opens the official explanation page.