November 2025 updates

When I created Tilemap Town in 2017 I started things out with the tile sheet that resulted from the Tileset Potluck project, and just used the image as-is; it wasn't made for Tilemap Town and wasn't set up for the way Tilemap Town does animation and autotiling, which were both added many years later. JustThePulp made a new "Global" sheet that is now the main tile sheet for the game, and there's also a new "Critters" and "Shadows" sheet. "Critters" got the various character graphics that were in Potluck, now set up for animation, plus extra character graphics like an animated crab. "Global" is a combination of tiles from the old Potluck and Extra sheets (and Extra itself mostly sourced them from OpenGameArt) and there's a bunch of extra colors, animation, and autotiling support on more tiles.

I migrated everything that people had previously made using the old sheets, so everything should still look the same (or better, for things that now have animation and autotiling). As part of this effort I also moved the web client away from using hardcoded positions in the Potluck set for icons and markers - instead there's an internal sheet provided with the web client for those things. This means lots of item types have new icons, instead of just using whatever was available in Potluck that seemed appropriate.

Client changes:

  • New animation mode that displays random frames, useful for disco lights and flickery flames. The animation frame duration feature works too, so you can have it update as quickly as you like.
  • Can specify what map you want to go to on the login screen - this will be used with a feature I want to do later on, where you could send someone a URL inviting them to visit a specific map.
  • Fixed a oversight with /mapscreenshot - it now loads images that are used on the map but that haven't been loaded by the client yet.
  • New item type that can hold a list of map tile templates, instead of just one. All map tiles listed in here will show up in the build menu, and you can copy tiles into it from the map, from the build menu, from a map tile item, and from your hotbar. There's also a search feature.
  • You can now define tilesets that work like the server-provided ones, where placed tiles are linked to the tileset and will update when the tileset does. (The downside is that if the item is deleted, the tiles placed from it lose their appearance.)
  • New option to specify which commands you want to treat as trusted in command lists, so you'll just run them instead of getting a prompt. You can also enter in the IDs of specific command list items to trust the whole item.
  • Web client now only loads the built-in tileset when you close the login screen instead of logging into a server. This is only used when building locally, so it reduces the bandwidth needed to load the client by a little bit.

Server changes:

  • Added a user flag (no_offline_pm_mail) that allows you to prevent private messages that were sent to you while you were offline from becoming mail; this normally happens when you have messages waiting but the server needs to restart. If you set this flag, the messages will simply be discarded in this situation.
  • Moving off the edge of a map while changing your offset (which can happen when using the /tailshift command and changing your direction at the same time as you step onto a new map) is now handled.
  • Timestamps sent from the server now have timezone information, so a private message received while offline will be correct to your own local timezone in your client.

Tileset upgrades:

  • Tile sheet images have been run through a PNG optimizer and are now smaller.
  • Build menu has been expanded and reorganized with a bunch of new tiles, and a lot of tiles have animation and autotiling that didn't previously have them.
  • New "Global" and "Critter" tile sheets, based on "Potluck" and "Extra", set up by JustThePulp.
  • New "Shadows" tile sheet with a greatly expanded set of shadows, also by JustThePulp.

I updated credits.txt to be clearer about exactly what came from where, and who made what, to the best of my knowledge. I'd like to try and get this new version onto the main website too at some point.

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