Overlay tiles

Overlay tiles are authored images that sit on top of your tokens — roofs you can peel off as players enter a building, tree canopies that hide what’s underneath, bridges, awnings, balconies. Each tile can optionally float above the basemap with subtle parallax as you pan, and optionally reveal a soft circular hole under any token standing beneath it so the player can still see their character.

Who can use it

Only GMs can place, edit, or remove overlay tiles. Players see them as they are — including any soft cutouts and the parallax effect — but can’t author or move them.

What you can build

Roofs you can open

Drop a roof onto a building. Toggle it off when players step inside; toggle it back on for the next room.

Tree canopies

Hide forest interiors. With soft cutout enabled, players still see their token through a fade as they walk under the leaves.

Bridges & arches

Things players walk under. Soft cutout makes tokens read clearly without losing the overhead structure.

Foreground depth

Give a flat map a sense of layered space — distant rooftops with light parallax create a parallax-feel as the camera pans.

Opening the tool

1. On the canvas toolbar, click the Overlay Tiles button (house icon). The keyboard shortcut is T.
2. The OVERLAY TILES panel appears. Drag the title bar to reposition.
3. Pick an image under Add tile (or work with an existing tile from the Tiles list).

Adding a tile

1. Under Add tile, click the image picker.
2. Choose an image from your asset library, upload a new one, or paste a URL.
3. The tile drops in at the scene’s centre, sized to match the image’s natural aspect ratio (clamped to roughly a third of the map’s smaller dimension). It’s selected automatically — a blue bounding box appears with corner handles and a gold rotation handle above.

Tip

For roofs and bridges, choose an image with a transparent background — PNG or WebP with alpha. The cutout under tokens only looks right when the rest of the tile is genuinely transparent rather than solid white.

Moving, resizing, rotating

While the Overlay Tiles tool is active, every tile is grabbable on the canvas:

Gesture	Result
Click a tile	Selects it. The blue bounding box appears. The inspector below scrolls to the Selected tile editor.
Drag the tile body	Move it.
Drag a corner handle	Resize from the opposite corner.
Drag a corner handle + Shift	Resize while keeping the original aspect ratio.
Drag the gold circle above the top edge	Rotate around the tile’s centre.
Drag the rotation handle + Shift	Snap rotation to 15° increments.
Esc	Deselect.
Switch to another tool	Tiles stop intercepting clicks — tokens beneath them become grabbable again.

You can also edit any of these by typing into the Selected tile fields in the inspector. The numeric X, Y, Width, Height, Rotation°, and Z order fields are kept in live sync with the canvas — move the tile on screen and they update; type a value and the tile snaps to it.

Per-tile settings

The Selected tile section of the inspector reveals these controls.

Image

The asset itself. Swap it any time without losing position or settings.

Position & size

X, Y, Width, Height. World-space pixels. The origin is the top-left of the unrotated rect; the tile rotates around its centre.

Rotation

In degrees. Use the gold handle for visual rotation; type into the field for precise angles (45, 90, etc.).

Z order

When several overlay tiles overlap, higher Z order draws on top of lower. Useful for stacking — e.g. a roof at z = 1 and a separate chimney detail at z = 2.

Opacity

0% (invisible) to 100% (opaque). Good for ghostly canopies that you want players to peer through.

Parallax

0% (default) anchors the tile to the world — it moves exactly with the basemap when you pan. Higher values offset it opposite the camera as you pan, so the tile reads as if it’s floating slightly above the map. A subtle setting (5–15%) on a tree canopy or distant rooftop creates depth without disorienting the table.

Tip

Parallax pairs nicely with the 2.5D height & parallax system on the basemap — try a tall building (height region 0.6) with its roof at parallax 10% for a layered feel. They use separate machinery and don’t fight each other.

Reveal mode

What the tile does to tokens that stand underneath it:

Mode	Behaviour
None (full occlude)	The tile hides whatever is under it, period.
Soft cutout under tokens	The tile becomes transparent in a soft circular fade at each token’s position, following the token as it moves. The player still sees their token through the roof.

The cutout updates in real time — drag a token around under a soft-cutout roof and the hole tracks it. Tokens belonging to other players are revealed the same way.

Hidden (roof opened)

Toggling this hides the tile entirely from everyone — including the players. This is the “GM opens the roof” toggle: when the party walks into a building, flip Hidden on and the roof disappears so the players can see the room. Flip it off when they leave. Soft cutouts are unrelated — Hidden takes the whole tile off the table, no fade.

Label

A short name for your benefit, shown in the Tiles list at the top of the inspector. Nothing renders to players.

The Tiles list

Above the Selected tile editor, the Tiles list shows every overlay tile on the scene. Each row has:

• Click anywhere on the row — selects the tile (same as clicking it on the canvas).
• Eye icon — toggles Hidden without selecting the tile. Quick way to peel a roof off mid-session.
• Trash icon — deletes the tile after a confirmation-free click. (No undo yet — be deliberate.)

When tiles save

Changes save automatically. Move, resize, rotate, or tweak a setting — the new state writes back to the scene shortly after you finish the gesture. There’s no Save button.

In multiplayer rooms, your edits broadcast to every connected client. Tile drags batch into one update per gesture, so other players see your final placement rather than every intermediate frame.

Limitations

• No undo for tile placement or deletion yet. Be deliberate with the trash icon.
• Static images only — no animated GIFs or sprite sheets. Use terrain effects for animated surfaces.
• GM-only authoring. Players can’t create or move tiles.
• No light interaction. A roof tile doesn’t physically block your scene’s lights from reaching tokens beneath — it’s a visual overlay only. (Use walls for line-of-sight blocking.)

Related

• 2.5D height & parallax — basemap-level depth that pairs well with overlay-tile parallax
• Terrain effects — animated surfaces (lava, water, force fields) for polygon shapes
• Fog of war — hide map regions from players entirely
• Lighting — light sources, dynamic shadows, and visibility