Suggestions

[BippyM]

Codetapper,

I have updated this first post with all suggestions (Mainly by moi). Can you let me know what is Definite/Maybe/Definitely not included I can sort the post accordingly. This will help avoid duplicate requests


Tile Ripper

• Ability to use a screenshot to manually grab the palette (Maybe a colour-picker tool)
• Ability to specify "Actual" tile heights that are not a multiple of 2. Skweek for example uses tiles that seem to be 24/25 pixels high
• Use of the mouse scroll wheel to either zoom in/out or scroll around the memory
• Allow scrolling around memory by pressing the left mouse on the image and dragging
• Ability to manually move specific tiles around and rearrange tilesets. Maybe have a second buffer to allow creation of custom sprite sheets. This will also allow games that use multiple tile sheets and have them loaded into slightly different memory locations to be rearranged.
• If clicking on a specific tile allow that one tile to have "Mask" properties if there's a mask. Skweek again has a mask for the first tile, but not the remaining tiles.
• For the copperlist address have a drop down box with all the copperlist addresses selectable.

Map Ripper

• Allow scrolling around maps by pressing the left mouse on the image and dragging
• Again allow scroll wheel to zoom in/out
• Map export feature (Text document)

Other

• Sprite tab where sprites can be rearranged, and joined to form one sheet. Many games have sprites at different addresses and each would need ripping individually
• Palette tab where the palette can be edited, magic wand picker etc

Map Search/Map Ripper

• Is it possible to add the function to skip bytes/words/longwords etc as opposed to having game specific templates. I'm sure Brat won't be the last game to need data skipping to find the map data?

[Codetapper]

There is already a "New Project" option in the File menu that resets everything

[BippyM]

Oops.. Thy eyes deceived me

[BippyM]

Here are a couple of suggestions, obviously some of these may already exist.

Tile Ripper

• Ability to use a screenshot to manually grab the palette (Maybe a colour-picker tool)
• Ability to specify "Actual" tile heights that are not a multiple of 2. Skweek for example uses tiles that seem to be 24/25 pixels high
• Use of the mouse scroll wheel to either zoom in/out or scroll around the memory
• Allow scrolling around memory by pressing the left mouse on the image and dragging
• Ability to manually move specific tiles around and rearrange tilesets. Maybe have a second buffer to allow creation of custom sprite sheets. This will also allow games that use multiple tile sheets and have them loaded into slightly different memory locations to be rearranged.
• If clicking on a specific tile allow that one tile to have "Mask" properties if there's a mask. Skweek again has a mask for the first tile, but not the remaining tiles.
• For the copperlist address have a drop down box with all the copperlist addresses selectable.

Map Ripper

• Allow scrolling around maps by pressing the left mouse on the image and dragging
• Again allow scroll wheel to zoom in/out
• Option to save the memory with the map. So effectively the map list

[CodyJarrett]

Originally Posted by bippym

[*]Ability to specify "Actual" tile heights that are not a multiple of 2. Skweek for example uses tiles that seem to be 24/25 pixels high

You can type the tile size into the "Actual tile size" drop-down if you want a custom size.

[Jerry]

It would be very cool if you could habe multiple tilesets per init file. This is probably not needed when just ripping maps, but it would be handy for saving of other sprites. Often when skimming through the memory for the tileset you encounter other sprites and it would be nice to quickly preserve these findings...

...and map as text export... that would be marvelous and not too difficult to implement...

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by Jerry

It would be very cool if you could have multiple tilesets per init file. This is probably not needed when just ripping maps, but it would be handy for saving of other sprites. Often when skimming through the memory for the tileset you encounter other sprites and it would be nice to quickly preserve these findings...

How would you envisage this working though? I couldn't think of an elegant way other than storing another config file (which was by far the easiest). If you have any brilliant ideas, post them here...

[Codetapper]

Here's an interesting case, ripped from Neighbours. Because the map effectively wraps around sideways, it's quite hard to work out how HOL should display this map, and there's an ugly diagonal row of tiles that are presumably never displayed.

Does anyone have any brilliant ideas about what we should upload for this game? Or just as-is?

[BippyM]

You could have the option to save the tiles/sprites selected to a buffer or export (Maybe to another tab/page) where the tile sheet can be built up, and then allow the saving on that page.

You'd have to specify rows and columns to save and most likely all gfx would have to be same dimensions.

Another suggestion: allow a grid overlay on the tile and map rippers.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by bippym

You could have the option to save the tiles/sprites selected to a buffer or export (Maybe to another tab/page) where the tile sheet can be built up, and then allow the saving on that page.

You'd have to specify rows and columns to save and most likely all gfx would have to be same dimensions.

Another suggestion: allow a grid overlay on the tile and map rippers.

Both of those are good ideas, and I've got them in my to do list.

For building up the tilesheet, I was thinking you'd just build up graphics into the temporary screen until the sheet was full, then it'd prompt you to save the graphics when there are too many to fit. How about games like Turrican 2 where there are say 8 sprites that are correct in a row before you need to alter the size? You kind of need a way to say "save the first 8 to the buffer" rather than having to do them one at a time. All I can think of is a "store single frame" button which would add the top left "tile" into the buffer, and a "store multiple frames" and you'd have to type in the number. Can you think of any better idea?

The grid in theory is easy, but in reality with map ripping is not quite so easy. Consider a game like Rick Dangerous, where the tiles are 16x16, but the map tab bolts 16 together in a 4x4 grid to make one "big" tile. Would the grid have an overlay separating the 16x16 pixel tiles or the 64x64 tiles?

The map ripper tab constructs the map based on the graphics in the tile ripper tab, so if those have grid lines through the tiles, they would also appear on the map at present making it a bit of a mess. I'll have a look at the code to see how difficult it is to make it add a pixel for the grid to all calculations and see if that'd work. Ideally a simple tickbox "grid on/off" would be nice to activate in any tab and preferably if the existing code handles this rather than having to allocate yet another bitmap and copy all graphics onto it with the extra pixel between them (as this would slow the program down).

[BippyM]

You could have the option once the "Export" button is pressed to select the specific tiles in the correct sequence using the mouse. Could add a tiny number to each sprite so the user would know the sequence. Then you could have a pop-up with the sprites in the correct sequence with a confirm and cancel button.

With the mapripper/grid issues. The grid would be automatically turned off when the mapripper is used. Alternatively it could check the "grid" status and warn the user that it is turned on.

As for the issue with grid sizes. A basic grid on the tile ripper would perhaps be sufficient. Sometimes it is difficult to see where one sprite ends and another starts when only 1 bpl is set.

[Jerry]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

How would you envisage this working though? I couldn't think of an elegant way other than storing another config file (which was by far the easiest). If you have any brilliant ideas, post them here...

For me something like a simple bookmark would suffice: A combobox with the name of the tileset (eg. Player sprite) and a button to create a new tileset. That would save some ini files.

[Codetapper]

OK I'll investigate how much work it'll be internally to implement something like that.

[BippyM]

Can you add the ability to flip a map on its x or y axis. obocod has levels that are upside down (Screen is simply flipped). I have got the maps, but I will have to flip them manually.

Cheers

[BippyM]

Can you add a load/save palette option please, also the ability to define the palette from a screenshot.

Cheers

[Codetapper]

If a screenshot is a 256 colour PNG (or even worse 24 bit PNG) how do you intend to match up the colours? There could be tens of "useless" colours in the copperlist, how will you known which are legit ones?

[BippyM]

I have more time to reply..

I think a Palette tab might work. Obviously only the number of colour entries as set on the ripper page should be allowed. There may be two screens, one with a zoom of a few tiles (Specified by the tile number, and then sequential tiles) and a zoom of the screenshot. Then simply the palette number is selected and the colour set, this would automatically set the colours in the tiles, or a tile can be selected, and the corresponding palette entry would then be changed.

Would this work how I am imagining it?

[BippyM]

Updated my previous post

[BippyM]

posted in the Brat thread also

Is it possible to add the function to skip bytes/words/longwords etc as opposed to having game specific templates. I'm sure Brat won't be the last game to need data skipping to find the map data?

Obviously this will have a trade-off on the map search screen by making searches potentially a loooong process, but if multi-threading is included it'll free up the other CPU cores..

[Codetapper]

The skipping bytes thing is easy, I've added that and uploaded a new version. Build 57 includes this feature.

The map thing will take a bit longer to code, but can be done. Some game specific templates do very strange things, they are not all as simple as skipping a few bytes...