can any solo indie devs out there who work on tile-based retro systems (gameboy, nes, etc) describe their workflow for me? right now i'm editing art in aseprite, exporting as png, converting to gameboy-format 2bpp to include in the ROM, and hard-coding tile indexes in my program (e.g., here's the list of tile indexes to draw the donut sprite, here's the list of tile indexes to draw the little house...). it's tedious and fragile and there has to be a better way?
i don't WANT to make my own pixel/tilemap editor but I will if I have to
also donuts and houses were just examples, i am not making a donut house game
@aparrish searches "You Own a Donut Shop!" on steam, gets sad.

@aparrish

You could use Tiled, save as JSON, and create a small script to convert it to the required format (no idea of what format GB uses).

@aparrish don't threaten me with a good time
LDtk

LDtk (Level Designer Toolkit) is an open-source 2D level editor for indie devs, with a strong focus on user-friendliness.