Removing tile from a tilemap doesn't unset the tile in the tilemap

[nightblade9]

Godot version

3.3.2

System information

Windows 10, GLES3

Issue description

After removing a tile from a tilemap, all tiles that used to be that tile ID, are still that tile ID - even though the editor shows them as empty.

Steps to reproduce

• Create a tilemap
• Create a tileset with two tiles (e.g. A and B) and assign it to the tilemap
• Draw some tiles of both A and B on the tilemap
• Edit the tilemap and delete tile B
• Using GDscript, print out the tile_id of every tile

Expected: you'll see tiles with ID 0 only (tile A) Actual: you see tiles with ID 0 and ID 1 (formerly tile B's ID)

Minimal reproduction project

No response

[kleonc]

Removing tile from a tilemap doesn't unset the tile in the tilemap

If you meant "Removing tile from a TileSet doesn't unset the tile in the TileMap" then I'd say that's expected/correct behavior. If you want to clear such tiles you can do it by calling fix_invalid_tiles() method on given TileMap. You can also trigger it from the editor:

[nightblade9]

then I'd say that's expected/correct behavior.

I don't think this is expected nor correct. Here's what I did:

• Make a tilemap with three tiles, and draw a bunch of all three. One of them is a "walkable" tile.
• Decide that I like parallax backgrounds instead
• Delete the "walkable" tile from the tileset
• Look at the tilemap. Those tiles previously containing the walkable tile, look empty in the Godot editor.

When I ran my game, it took me a while to figure out why monsters aren't moving onto those tiles - because they're not walkable (tile ID of -1). They have a tile ID of two, which isn't even a valid tile in my tileset.

The work-around was to flood-fill them and flood-fill-erase them (right-click).

[nightblade9]

I didn't see until now you mentioned the editor option to fix invalid tiles. That's great. That also relies on you thinking/realizing that there are invisible tiles, which is made more difficult because the editor shows you empty space after deleting an invalid tile. There isn't even a warning/error printed to tip you off that there's something wrong.

[akien-mga]

AFAIK the new tiles editor in 4.0 will show you "removed" tiles visually as invalid: https://godotengine.org/article/tiles-editor-progress-report-2

So I think this can be considered fixed in 4.0.

If someone wants to work on a similar UX improvement for 3.x, that could likely be done (draw "removed" tiles with something that makes it clear that they're different from an empty tile (ID -1).

Otherwise yes, it's intended that when tiles get removed from a tileset, it doesn't automatically unset them from all tilemaps that use this tileset. This lets you replace a tile by a new one easily, or even swap tilesets, without losing information.

[kleonc]

That also relies on you thinking/realizing that there are invisible tiles, which is made more difficult because the editor shows you empty space after deleting an invalid tile. There isn't even a warning/error printed to tip you off that there's something wrong.

Yeah, no feedback to the user is the problem here, not clearing invalid tiles automatically isn't.

---

AFAIK the new tiles editor in 4.0 will show you "removed" tiles visually as invalid: https://godotengine.org/article/tiles-editor-progress-report-2

Also: a tweet about it.

If someone wants to work on a similar UX improvement for 3.x, that could likely be done (draw "removed" tiles with something that makes it clear that they're different from an empty tile (ID -1).

I'll try doing something similar.