Spritesheets and Tilemaps

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

Convert an image into a PythonExtra-compatible spritesheet
Load it and draw individual tiles
Render a full tilemap made of tile indices

This is perfect for platformers, top-down maps, menus, or puzzle games!

Step 1: Prepare your tileset image

Create a tileset using any image editor like Aseprite, Piskel, or even Photoshop.
All tiles must be the same size — for example, 16×16 pixels.

Here’s an example of a classic Mario tileset:

Tiles from the classic Mario

Make sure the image is in .png or .jpg format, and that it’s tightly packed — no spacing between tiles.

Step 2: Convert the image using `fxconv`

You’ll need the fxconv tool included in the PythonExtra dev tools.

Run this command in your terminal:

python tools/fxconv-main.py --bopti-image super-tiles.jpg \
    -o smario_tiles.py \
    --cg profile:p4_rgb565 name:image --py

This will generate a file called smario_tiles.py, which contains the image as a gint.image() object.

You can download a pre-converted version [here](](/wiki/img/python/examples/smario_tiles.py)

Quick breakdown

Option	What it does
`--bopti-image`	Converts an image file
`-o smario_tiles.py`	Output file name (Python module)
`--cg profile:p4_rgb565`	Compression profile for ClassPad (fast & compact)
`name:image`	Variable name that will hold the image object
`--py`	Export as Python code instead of C

You’ll end up with something like this inside the file:

from gint import image
image = image(...)  # auto-created with width, height, etc.

Step 3: Create a tilemap

A tilemap is just a 2D list of tile indices:

level = [
  [0, 1, 2],
  [0, 3, 4],
  [0, 0, 0]
]

Each number tells which tile from the spritesheet to use.

Tiles mapping to indexes

Tile 0 is the top-left tile, tile 1 is the one next to it, and so on, left-to-right, row-by-row.

Step 4: Draw the tilemap using `dsubimage`

Here’s the function we’ll use:

def draw_tilemap(tilemap, tileset_img, x0=0, y0=0):
    tiles_per_row = tileset_img.width // TILE_SIZE

    for y, row in enumerate(tilemap):
        for x, tile_index in enumerate(row):
            tile_x = (tile_index % tiles_per_row) * TILE_SIZE
            tile_y = (tile_index // tiles_per_row) * TILE_SIZE
            dsubimage(x0 + x * TILE_SIZE, y0 + y * TILE_SIZE, tileset_img,
                      tile_x, tile_y, TILE_SIZE, TILE_SIZE)

tiles_per_row is how many tiles fit horizontally in the image
tile_index is the number from the map
We compute its position in the image and use dsubimage() to blit it

Final Code

Screenshot of the final result

from gint import *
from smario_tiles import image as tileset_img

TILE_SIZE = 16
SPRITE_WIDTH = tileset_img.width

def draw_tilemap(tilemap, tileset_img, x0=0, y0=0):
    tiles_per_row = SPRITE_WIDTH // TILE_SIZE

    for y, row in enumerate(tilemap):
        for x, tile_index in enumerate(row):
            tile_x = (tile_index % tiles_per_row) * TILE_SIZE
            tile_y = (tile_index // tiles_per_row) * TILE_SIZE
            dsubimage(x0 + x * TILE_SIZE, y0 + y * TILE_SIZE, tileset_img,
                      tile_x, tile_y, TILE_SIZE, TILE_SIZE)

# Sample tilemap
level = [
    [  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0 ],
    [  0,  1,  2,  3,  0,  0,  0,  1,  2,  3,  0 ],
    [  0,  5,  6,  7,  0,  0,  0,  5,  6,  7,  0 ],
    [  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0 ],
    [  0,  0,  0, 14, 13, 14,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0 ],
    [  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0 ],
    [  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0 ],
    [  0,  0, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14,  0,  0,  0, 15 ],
    [  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0, 15, 15 ],
    [ 35, 36, 37,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0, 15, 15, 15 ],
    [ 39, 39, 39, 39, 39, 39, 39, 39, 39, 39, 39 ]
]

# Run
dclear(C_WHITE)
draw_tilemap(level, tileset_img)
dupdate()
getkey()

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