MooseTrax Level Forge

Your map. Now a living level.

MooseTrax Level Forge (formerly Map Collision Painter) is a focused editor for 2D games built on big painted map images. Paint the walls and walk-behind areas, place NPCs, chests, doors and monster spawns with RPG-style events, and now stack layers, parallax skies, weather and flickering lights on top, then export it all to your engine.

It runs offline, as a desktop app or in your browser. No account, no internet. Your maps never leave your computer.

New in 1.2: Layers, parallax, weather & lights

• Layers panel: as many layers as you like, of every kind: image, parallax background, foreground overlay, collision, behind, objects, effects, lights and folders. Rename, duplicate, reorder, hide, lock, set opacity and blend mode (normal, multiply, screen, add). Everything is undoable.
• Player depth marker ("Player draws here"): layers above it draw over the player.
• Parallax backgrounds with factor X / Y, repeat and auto-scroll, previewed live while you pan.
• Cutaway masks: cut (K) and restore (J) parts of a map so the parallax shows through, or build the mask from a pre-cut PNG's transparency. Export the cutaway mask PNG or a pre-cut image PNG.
• Foreground overlays such as tree canopies, placed at X / Y and optionally Y-sorted with the player.
• Effects: fog, rain, snow, falling leaves, fireflies, lightning, day / night tint and vignette, with an animated preview you can pause (P).
• Lights: darkness with an ambient colour, plus point lights with radius, colour, intensity and flicker (Light tool L).

Objects & events (since 1.1)

• Place NPCs, chests, doors, signs, spawns, trigger zones and items. Click for a point, drag for a zone. Each one can show a sprite preview.
• One event per object: trigger (Action button, Player touch, Autorun, Parallel), an optional switch or variable condition, and commands such as Show Text, Transfer Player, Give Item, Set Switch / Variable, Play Sound, Wait, If / else and Custom Script.

Still the fast collision painter

• Collision (red) and Behind (blue) brushes from 1 to 256 px. Strokes are merged into as few rectangles as practical when you export.
• Rectangle, Select and Eraser tools, numeric X / Y / W / H, snap to grid and 100 steps of undo.
• Round-trip editing: open your export again and keep working. Files from 1.0 and 1.1 open unchanged.

Export to your engine

• Native JSON with the full layer stack (layers[]), plus collision[], occluders[], objects[], parallax[], overlays[], effects[] and lights[].
• Tiled map (.tmj): the whole stack as Tiled layers, with group layers for folders and parallax settings on image layers.
• Phaser 3: a loader snippet, and examples/phaser3-scene.js, which rebuilds images, cutaways, parallax, overlays, effects and lights.
• Godot 4 and Unity: example loaders in examples/ rebuild the layer stack, effects, lights and objects from the JSON or .tmj export. There is no separate Godot or Unity export button.

What's in the download

• Desktop builds for Windows (zip), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel zips) and Linux (zip or AppImage), plus a web version zip that runs in your browser.
• 4 pixel-art demo maps with collision files, and a layered sky-island demo with parallax clouds, a cutaway, a canopy overlay, rain, fog, fireflies and lamps
• Example sprites you can use in your own games: chests, door, sign, three NPCs, key, potion, coin, slime, bat, skeleton and ghost with idle frames, and a priest with a 16-frame run cycle
• 32-bit style art pack (examples/sprites32/ and examples/maps32/): 66 sprites (27 objects, 15 items, 9 NPCs, 12 monsters incl. a 64px dark-knight boss and a mimic, 3 effects) with animation strips, category sheets and sprites32.json, plus maps32 including a village-showcase level with 25 objects. These are example sprites and maps so you can try the tool right away. They're not a full game art set, but you're welcome to use them in your own games (see LICENSE-SPRITES.txt).
• Phaser 3, Godot 4 and Unity examples, README.md, CHANGELOG.md and LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.txt

Honest notes

• No installer: every download is a zip (or the Linux AppImage). Unzip and run. On Windows, SmartScreen may warn the first time because the app isn't code-signed; click More info → Run anyway.
• macOS: the app is not notarized by Apple. The first time, right-click (or Ctrl-click) it and choose Open, then Open again. On macOS 15 and later you may need System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
• The Godot 4 examples were tested in Godot 4.7.2.
• The Unity scripts were compiled and run against stand-ins (stubs) for the Unity API. They have not been run inside the Unity editor yet. Please report anything that breaks.
• Each engine draws effects, blend modes and lights a little differently from the editor preview. For example, Godot has no screen blend, so screen is drawn as add. The README lists the differences.
• Level Forge stores your events. Your game runs them, using the included examples or your own code.

System requirements

64-bit Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel) or 64-bit Linux. The web version needs a current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. A 1280×800 screen and a mouse are recommended.

License (summary)

• Use everything you export in any project, free or commercial. No royalties, no credit required.
• The demo maps and example sprites may be used in your own games, but not resold or shared as a standalone asset or sprite pack.
• Please don't resell or redistribute the tool itself. Full terms are in LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.txt.

---

Questions or found a bug? Leave a comment below. — Johnny, MooseTrax Gaming Studio