Tilemap Layer objects

A Tilemap Layer is a display object that shows a map based on tiles. There are two Phaser built-in types dedicated to this, the StaticTilemapLayer and the the DynamicTilemapLayer.

The main difference is that a static layer is read-only but faster, while you can modify the tiles of a dynamic layer.

To create a tilemap layer, first, you have to create a Tilemap object. Then, you can drag the StaticTilemapLayer or DynamicTilemapLayer from the Blocks view and drop it in the scene:

Adding a tilemap layer.

The Scene Editor does not support empty tilemap layers, and you have to select one of the layers defined in any of the tilemaps created in the scene:

Selecting the layer.

And that’s all, the tilemap layer is displayed in the scene:

The layer is created in the scene.

When you save the scene, the scene compiler generates the code of the tilemap layer using the createStaticLayer or createDynamicLayer methods.

In the next code, a new static layer is created, using the the World1 layer data and the SuperMarioBros-World1-1 tileset:

// world1
super_mario_1.createStaticLayer("World1", ["SuperMarioBros-World1-1"], 107, 110);

A layer may use only a subset of the tilesets defined in a tilemap. The compiler scans all the layer’s tiles and uses as argument only the name of the tilesets referenced in the tiles.

A tilemap layer has a lot of utility methods and properties, so probably you may want to assign it to a field by setting its variable scope to Class.

When you select a tilemap layer, the Inspector view shows some of the properties of the layer (all of them are read-only):

Tilemap layer properties.

Also, because it is a display object, other common properties are available: