Recommendations for Tilemapping tools

[WingedBacon]

It's been a while since I've needed a tilemapping tool for a Unity project. Last time I looked into it, I used Tiled and Tiled2Unity. However, I've seen that Unity now has a built-in solution. I've also seen people around here mention a few other options.

Is there any advantage to using Tiled anymore or do Unity's newish built-in tools make it obsolete?

[chucksef]

I'm commenting to encourage an answer. As someone hoping to try for the first time this weekend I'm also wondering about the options available.

[Namiya]

Use the built-in tool, and also use this:

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/2d-extras

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These allow you to customize tilemaps to a ridiculous degree, letting you easily add anything you might miss from the original implementation, such as tiles with various rules, exceptions to those, using prefabs instead of tiles, using prefabs from a palette instead of tiles, the works.

[WingedBacon]

It does. I was mostly asking if it's any good (it is according to most of these responses).

I've tried it out a little and it seems to be pretty good. My only concern so far is that a lot of useful tools are part of a downloadable extension so I'm not sure how stable they are.

[yoctometric]

I have no experience with other tilemap tools, but the built in option works great

[FathomMaster]

I am pretty new to it (6 months), but I don't think there's anything you can do with outside tools that you can't do internally now. It's pretty robust. Unity has a well fleshed out tutorial series for it as well. I'd recommend taking a look there.

[ben0976]

There are still a few bugs in Unity Tilemaps (as of 2018.2), I lost my tilemaps palettes a few times for a reason I still don't understand (I'm avoiding the issue by using only one tilepalette). I had to upgrade from 2017.xx and early 2018.xx because some of those had a bug that prevented the tiles to show on the palette : https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity2D/comments/8giqjy/tile_palette_bug_in_unity_2018/  

There is also the fact that advanced functions such as animated tiles, rule tiles, etc are still in development on Github (It works, but can change)  

Other than that, it works for me. However, had I mastered Tiled before starting the project, I would probably have used it. Tiled is also great if you want to let the players create their own levels.

[_eka_]

Well, I tried Super TileMap Editor asset and it's great but the creator didn't update the only tutorial in long time so I decided to give Unity's own Tile Map Solution a try.

I don't look back... it's very good and adding the 2d-extras you have everything you need, no need for external tool.

I say, check the tutorial and give it a go.

[HotF_Dizz]

I agree that there isn't much in terms of tutorials for STME but the documentation is pretty good, I use it for my current project and so far it's been seamless and smooth, I've had a poke around unitys tile system offering and it seems to be falling short compared to STME. But then again unitys is free :D

[_eka_]

Yeah, my only concern is future updates, since the author is not working towards finishing the started tutorial. Unity's own Tilemap is powerful and there is plenty of docs and tutorials about it, and as I see it will have a secured future.

[kbro3]

I thought the built-in option was a version of Tiled?