eab mapmaker alpha 1

[gimbal]

Fashionably late as always (had some application focus issues to fix), but I have uploaded the first alpha of MapMaker. You can find the download links on the project page:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~gimbal/projects/mapmaker.htm

The current todo list can be found here, just in case you want to report something that I already thought of:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~gimbal/project...r/mm_todo.html

Installation is really simple, you need WindowsXP and Java 6. Unpack the mapmaker rar file somewhere and run the executable, it should work. As for Vista, Linux and Mac: untested because I do not have access to those systems. I am going to install Linux to test at least that version. Stick with XP for now if you want to test it, but if you want to be stubborn and run it on a different OS, you can run mapmaker.jar in stead.

The other file you can download, plugin_sdk040a.rar, is the "source development kit" for developing MapMaker plugins. It contains a shitty explanation doc, the javadocs for the classes you need to use and the source code for the three plugins I have written so far. I don't expect anyone to use this yet since it is still alpha (meaning that anything can still change, breaking both maps you make and plugins you write), but developers may be curious to take a look.

The third file you can download is a test spritesheet I have been using to test the spritesheet importers. First you have to figure out how to install the plugins themselves (poke around the app a little, you will run into the info one way or the other ), after that you can use the imported icons to test out some of the features of the app.

While using the app you may think that certain elements are implemented a bit limiting, you are correct. Many things are going to be made more flexible in the next release, including:

- freely selecting any iconset to draw icons from in any map and the ability to edit iconsets without having a map opened.
- the ability to have multiple maps open at the same time
- the ability to merge icons into one
- possibly the next version will have more dockable components in stead of them being fixed in one position

As for help, the application comes loaded with many help pages. Spot the blue question mark icons everywhere to get a world of information.

Thanks to all who want to try it out!

[TCD]

Thanks gimbal
I'll try this one tomorrow, since it's now time for me to go to sleep
I'm curious what the plugin SDK will be like.

[Dianetix]

Nice Gimbal, will give it a go

[gimbal]

small bug found: when you use the "create new iconset" panel, the groupname you input is ignored; in stead the name of the iconset is used for both the iconset and the default group.

Any bugs that I fix will be in the 0.41a version that I will release shortly.

[TCD]

Hi gimbal,

I just can't figure out how to load the PNG file to the iconset
The programm seems interesting and I would like to test it. I've installed/loaded the plugins, but have no clue where to add the PNG file.
What about a short readme for it?

[gimbal]

yeah I was figuring that would happen, some things do not speak for themselves yet Working with the icon browser is one of the things that takes a little exploring. When you open the icon browser window you can right click and you have an option "import spritesheet" that does the trick.

But I am thinking of adding a context menu to the icon browser window where I will move some of the options to, such as "rename iconset", "add group" and "import spritesheet", the things that have nothing to do directly with existing groups and icons.

(note that even when you try to paint without having an icon you will get a help page telling you how to get there dude )

[TCD]

Alright, got it working
What about a right click in the main editor window opens the iconset browser, os you can quickly change the icon.
Also a 'snap to grid' (with the size of the selected) icon would be great.
And yeah I should have tried to paint, but in most programs just nothing would happen. It's a clever idea to give the user the help message when he does something wrong
Yet a readme or a help menu entry won't hurt

[gimbal]

For quick icon selection I have added the favorites panel. Right clicking in the editor window is going to create a context menu in the future (for adding meta information to icons).

You are not looking for a snap to grid exactly (the app operates on a grid always, for now!), but you want to move the cursor an amount of units depending on the size of the cursor. So if an icon is 16 pixels wide (2 cell units), you want the mouse cursor to actually move the 16 pixels horizontally in stead of the 8 pixels it would do now.

I like that idea, I am adding it to the "must have" todo list.

Yet a readme or a help menu entry won't hurt

Yes yes, full manual will be added

edit:

well, to make things a tiny bit clearer, I have cleaned up the right-click popup menu of the iconset browser. Options for selected icons and the current group are now in their own submenu. This will be available in the 0.41a also. For now, screeny:

[Thalion]

Nice release. Will try it out today.

[gimbal]

My latest invention, IT'S ALIVE! ALIIIIIIVE!!!!

... yeah sorry, but what I created today I was not able to for a long time since I had no clue how to do it.

Yet again to improve the way you select icons, I have built a monster. In the current alpha version you can cycle through your favorite icons quickly using the scrollwheel. Well, in the next version, which I am going to release this evening, you will see this when you use the scrollwheel:



Granted it will not win any prizes for beauty yet, but it is functional. This is a minitiature version of the favorites panel that will appear close to the mouse pointer. The features of this panel are:

- it will disappear automatically when you do nothing for a short while, or when you focus another window, or when you click the right mouse button.

- using the scrollwheel you can select icons in the panel. When an icon is selected and the panel disappears because of the timeout the icon is selected for painting.

- when you hover the mouse into the panel, it will remain on screen and you can select an icon by clicking it. Moving the mouse outside of the panel will still make it disappear after a short delay.

Stay tuned

[TCD]

Great news gimbal
I'm looking forward to test your new version later on.
And get lost of that Frankenstein feeling, doesn't suit you

[gimbal]

aight, the latest update is downloadable (see first post). Changes:

- new iconset group name bug fixed
- the new favorites popup panel
- icon browser menu cleanup

and the biggest update is that iconsets are no longer bound to a map; you can freely select them from the icon browser (using the combobox that now appears at the bottom of it) and you can paint icons from any iconset into maps. The icon browser can now also be opened without having a map opened.

HOWEVER... this change unfortunately means that maps and plugins from 0.40a are broken So, before running this version, do the following:

- make sure MapMaker isn't running
- remove all files you extracted from the old rar file and extract the ones from the new rar file
- go to c:\documents and settings\username and remove the .abimemm subdirectory to start 100% fresh.

Replace 'username' with your XP username. The path may be in your native language of course.

I hope that after this version I can prevent the data format from becoming incompatible.

[gimbal]

still working hard on new features and improvements. Currently I have the very complicated (to develop) "meta information" system in the pipeline. It is even too complex to explain in words clearly, but I will write a tutorial with screenshots that explains exactly how it works, which I will do shortly.

The basic idea of this is that you can construct your own user interface forms with your own fields (textfields, textareas, select boxes, checkboxes or color choosers at the moment) and with these forms you can input game specific map data, such as waypoint information, enemy behaviors, script references, etc. At the moment you can only bind this "meta data" to icons painted into the map, but in the future you will also be able to bind meta data to maps themselves, and possibly other elements.

One other improvement I have made is to break another limitation. Consider this screenshot:



The tetris piece I have selected has transparent cells. In the old version these transparent areas would be considered part of the icon and when you would paint over it (in overwrite mode), the icon would be replaced entirely (in insert mode you would not be able to paint into the transparent cells). Not so anymore in the new version, as you can see the transparent areas are now considered empty space and you can paint into them as you see fit, allowing you to have non-square icons!

[gimbal]

Major update, which is best seen in this screenshot:




Added:

- workspace panel giving you access to all maps and iconsets in the workspace. The old layers sidepanel has been integrated into this. Double clicking any of the items will open them (if you double click a map it is opened in the edit area, if you double click a layer of a map it is made the active layer to draw to, if you double click an iconset it is opened inside the icon browser).

- ability to open multiple maps at the same time. The most important thing here is that in the future I can now also allow you to open different types of documents, not only maps. This is going to be used at least to create icon templates (icons you group together and can paste as if they are one).

- many of the menu options have changed or have been removed due to the new workspace sidepanel, giving a cleaner interface IMHO.


bugs fixed:

- both icon import plugins contained a serious bug, one screwing up the icons (importer 1), the other making it impossible to import a sheet if it contained transparent space at the end (importer 2).

- when an icon importer plugin fails, it will now tell you why at the bottom of the main editor window. That was a feature added from the beginning, but it only contained a comment line "TODO"... oops

- when closing a workspace when there was no icon browser visible would create an exception error message. You wouldn't even see it though and it did not do anything harmful, only preventing the "closed workspace yada" message from appearing

This version, after I test some more, will be uploaded ASAP.

[gimbal]

And another update:



This is the first alternative document type that MapMaker can now open. This is the welcome page, which is opened when you create a new workspace. It contains useful starting information to get you going in the right direction without needing a manual by your side. In the future I am going to add specific tutorials to this page that can possibly even be interactive.

- Also I squashed a zillion newly introduced bugs with all the changes, I am getting close to testable again
- and as a small change, the selected icon (in the bottom right corner) can now also be changed even when you do not have a map opened (before you would get a "you do not have a map opened!" nag popup)
- and the paint cursor is no longer only a stupid red square, but a stupid red (or green in overwrite mode) square with inside it the icon you are going to paint.

[RCK]

nice work !

[gimbal]

thank you very much!

[gimbal]

version 0.70a is now downloadable, at the same spot as always:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~gimbal/projects/mapmaker.htm

I tested and I tested and I tested and I fixed a million bugs and quirks, I cannot guarantee that I caught them all And also again major revisions were made to the data structure to make the above mentioned changes possible, so before running this version do the following (copy paste from previous post):

- make sure MapMaker isn't running
- remove all files you extracted from the old rar file and extract the ones from the new rar file
- go to c:\documents and settings\username and remove the .abimemm subdirectory to start 100% fresh.

Replace 'username' with your XP username. The path may be in your native language of course.

I seriously hope that this will be the last time I have to change the data structure such that it will break older versions.


Changes since last post:

- fixed a bug in the workspace export. You could have never seen it, it occurred when you had at least two plugins, which until this release you didn't have.

- added a workspace export plugin that creates a "EMB" file, "Eab Mapmaker Binary". This file format is the format that can be used to load in games and is specifically optimized for efficient and selective loading. For now this is only useful for me though, to do further testing The source code for this plugin is added to the plugin sdk, but a file format description will of course be added when the time is right.

- icon favorites are now bound to the workspace in stead of a map. This means that you will have the same favorites for all maps, but it also means you can have favorites for documents that are not maps. I needed this for a feature that is going to be added to the next version: icon templates.

- added a version check to workspaces. MapMaker 0.70a will refuse to load workspaces from earlier versions (a little nicer than just letting the loading code blow up). But you really should remove all old data as mentioned at the top.

- added some graphics here and there; a splash screen and a background image to fill up the void when you have no workspace opened, both thrown together by a mate of mine.