10 replies to this topic

[Cobgoblin]

I'm doing some tileset work and I'm trying to understand if folks in the community actually leverage the auto combo feature to any degree.

 

For example, I'm considering setting up some mountain tiles in Relational Mode (they're a bit more complicated than typical pancake mountains), but I'm wondering if it's actually worth my time overall.

 

Here's an example of the potential strength of auto combos:

Edited by Cobgoblin, 16 May 2025 - 10:43 PM.

[Moosh]

An excellent question. As the guy who made the feature, I use almost all of them, but the relational ones get the most regular use. The ones I use the least are the pancake and complex mountains. In the case of the former because it just feels uncomfortable drawing with them in the editor and in the case of the latter because none of the tilesets I work with use them. I'll always welcome autocombo setups being included in new tilesets even if they're incomplete and require multiple passes or some manual touching up.

[Rambly]

No, not really.

 

For a while, I was in the habit of using Fence autocombos for GB-style dungeon walls (and I made use of them extensively for the caves in The Enigma of Basilischi Island). Lately I've found that it's actually less friction to just use the multi-combo selector to select the edges and corner and "drag out" the edges up to the corner for each side, but I've mostly been doing square house interiors lately so that might change in the future. For other autocombo types, I find myself manually placing tiles to make up for the autocombo's limitations often enough that I might as well just place everything manually.

 

As an aside, I don't use combo aliases either (it's literally just faster to select combos using the multis-selector, switch layers using the 1-6 keys, and then repeat). I'm also not wild about combo pools. I get too annoyed when details are at a lateral or clustered too close together. Manual placement is the only way I can tolerate placing detail.

 

90% of the time I hit the 'o' key in the editor it's me mistakenly hitting it trying to hit the 'p' key to jump to a combo page. I've thought about removing the hotkey, to be honest.

[Anthus]

So I feel kind of bad admitting this, but I don't use them regularly at all. It's mostly cause I forget they are a thing though. I mainly use cambria/ classic/ custom stuff anyway and those tiles are pretty simple and I don't really feel the need to set them up/ use them. If I used a more involved set I would probably use them, and if they were already set up in a set, and I remembered they exist, I'd probably use them as well.

 

edit: also I'm unsure of even how to set them up.

[Cobgoblin]

I should've had it on the onset, but I added a 3rd question to the poll around if you'd be willing to use them if they were already set up in a tileset.

 

Also attached a video demo in the OP.

 

 

An excellent question. As the guy who made the feature, I use almost all of them, but the relational ones get the most regular use. The ones I use the least are the pancake and complex mountains. In the case of the former because it just feels uncomfortable drawing with them in the editor and in the case of the latter because none of the tilesets I work with use them. I'll always welcome autocombo setups being included in new tilesets even if they're incomplete and require multiple passes or some manual touching up.

 

I can definitely see the utility of this feature as I've been playing with it a lot in the development of my tileset. If nothing else, it helps me ensure I have all the possible connectors.

 

One potential weakness of this is that it potentially adds... noise to the combo page if that makes sense. Some of the connectors are itty-bitty and finicky and I think wouldn't be used often in manual mode.

Edited by Cobgoblin, 16 May 2025 - 10:47 PM.

[Moosh]

One potential weakness of this is that it potentially adds... noise to the combo page if that makes sense. Some of the connectors are itty-bitty and finicky and I think wouldn't be used often in manual mode.

Something you can do for the relational modes is leave them incomplete in places, only fill in spaces for the essential combos, but have the tiles for all of them in the tile pages. Basic Relational, Relational, and Flat Mountain all allow for duplicate combos. Dungeon Carving sadly does not and this sucks because it's one that could benefit from it the most. A workaround I did in Cambria is I have the very last combo page filled with combos for invalid data. Then Shift + Auto Generate to fill all the unused spaces with these filler combos. An unfortunate downside of this approach is that you can't insert new combos earlier in the list without decimating the autocombos. I've gotten used to working without the insert shortcut because of scripts, but some people may find this annoying.

[Hari]

I usually just manually place combos, and use the multi-combo selector to make some things easier to place. I'm kinda just way too particular about how combos are arranged on my screens, so auto combos end up being unappealing to me. x_x

 

If I did use auto combos, relational and fence are probably the ones I'd use the most.

 

and I'm with Rambly on combo pools. I much prefer being able to choose exactly which detail goes where, otherwise it just ends up not looking right.

[ShadowTiger]

Flat mountains are a very easy "yes" here if those are the types of mountains I'm working with, such as in Classic or Cambria.  There are just so many possible uses for them there.  That is, on the condition that they connect to adjacent screens. It looks god-awful if the edges of the mountains stop at the edge of the screen by default.

 

Fence Autocombos are an easy yes. 

 

Relationals are great for so many things.  Grass, puddles, lakes... you name it.

 

----

The thing I miss the most is the old style of Dungeon Carving mode.  It did exactly what we wanted it to.  Now, it feels like it does the opposite of what we need it to do, by default.  What are the ideal settings for it to make it act like the old style?

[Cobgoblin]

Well I think I got what I needed to know out of this poll. Thanks everyone who responded!

 

I think my takeaway is that I ought to set up auto combos. There are people who would use it if already set up, and if they were set up out of the box more often, I half wonder if some of those folks who answered No as of today would slowly move over over time.

 

That said, I absolutely get why a lot of people don't find value out of it right now. It's a bit of a blunt instrument, so to speak. It's likely most useful right at the start of making a screen to lay out the basics prior to detail. Even in my video demo, I had to very carefully use it to not have the multiple relational patterns step on each other's toes.

 

What I need to find the balance on is making sure the layout of the combos is still easy to use in manual mode while having auto combos available to those would use it. Relational combos for example result in a lot of fiddly little connectors which may visually pollute the combo pages and reduce usability.

[Rambly]

What I need to find the balance on is making sure the layout of the combos is still easy to use in manual mode while having auto combos available to those would use it. Relational combos for example result in a lot of fiddly little connectors which may visually pollute the combo pages and reduce usability.

I'm still of the opinion that the only really sensible solution to this is to just have dupes of the combos on page, like, 200. This is basically what people did for relationals back in the 1.92 days. I think "good, user-friendly combo layout" and "layout that works with autocombos" are just mutually exclusive goals.

Alternatively, I think the autocombo editor lets you select the combos for the autocombo manually, so you can just make the combo layout whatever you want. That means you still have to deal with the weird little connectors, though...

[Moosh]

The thing I miss the most is the old style of Dungeon Carving mode.  It did exactly what we wanted it to.  Now, it feels like it does the opposite of what we need it to do, by default.  What are the ideal settings for it to make it act like the old style?

• Make sure the Erase Combo is a floor combo and not combo 0.
• On a new screen, Ctrl+Left Click to fill it with ceiling combos.
• Right click to erase floors from the filled in section.

I apologize for the extra hassle caused by that extra left click to fill. Inverting how the walls used to work was a consistency decision since everything else is left click to place, right click to erase. I also had the erase not place down new walls around it because that seemed like it'd cause more destructive actions on a partially built screen.
 

Alternatively, I think the autocombo editor lets you select the combos for the autocombo manually, so you can just make the combo layout whatever you want. That means you still have to deal with the weird little connectors, though...

This works yeah. And like I said earlier, most of the layouts work on a basic filled/not filled binary for their logic and so in those cases the connectors are completely optional. You can leave them as combo 0 and they'll work mostly fine aside from behaving oddly on a new screen (since those start out filled with combo 0). For ones that don't allow this, you can recycle the same set of generic placeholders between them.