MapMaker sneak preview 1

[Thalion]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I have seen some existing map editors, but they always work exactly like I don't want it. Either the GUI is crude, the program is full of bugs or the features are too limited.

I do like the isometric editor built into "Mappy" though, I might think about adding an isometric view myself. With the help of OpenGL it shouldn't be too hard.

I like your attitude. If you need some testers later on i would be willing to help you.

[gimbal]

thou shalt be calleth upon

I couldn't resist and I am working on the spritesheet importer. It makes it more easy to test also because you can quickly generate a full iconset to play around with, enough spritesheets floating around this forum

Also, I updated the last screenshot so it reflects the current state. Plugins can now give a description to MapMaker, which it will display in the description box. That way you can have a basic understanding of what the plugin exactly does.

[Joe Maroni]

any news ???

i hope to see a nice tool to create maps for games...

[gimbal]

Wow, it is quite a difference to be doing something that is apparently in demand. But give me a little time, I'm a Java dork, but I'm not THAT fast!

Here, to prove I'm not sitting still, here is a screenshot of the icon importer, in this case configured to import a spritesheet:



I am going to write two or three different versions of the plugin. This one take a spritesheet with sprites of equal size. You define the size of the sprites/tiles and the amount of pixels between them horizontally and vertically, then the importer will split the spritesheet into icons, adding them to the temporary group that you specify (so you can move the icons to the proper groups afterwards). You also specify which color is used as the transparent color, so MapMaker can turn those pixels into true transparent pixels. By default I picked the purple/pink color that I see in all spritesheets in the 'sprites' project (255,0,255). When you click the colored square you get a second popup allowing you to specify the RGB values.

The second version of the plugin will take spritesheets also, but in stead of dimensions the window will allow you to specify a color of the borders around the tiles. This plugin allows a spritesheet to have sprites / tiles of different sizes.

I will probably also have to write a third implementation that will show the actual spritesheet, and then you can select icons within it by simply clicking them, allowing you to make adjustments to the selection rectangles. This one will be the hardest to implement, but probably the easiest to use.

[Thalion]

Wow how comfy.

[gimbal]

Well I found another major design flaw that I am fixing... the spritesheet importer (the first version) is working fine... but I came to realize that for a lot of games the amount of sprites/tiles could be well over 400. For example cannon fodder has 400+ unique ground tiles, PER world (jungle, arctic, etc). Even though a separate iconset can be created for each world, that is still 400+ icons in each one. It would be INSANE to put that amount in a tree structure and still be usable! Argh!

So, back to the drawing board. Now I have come up with a design that seems to scream YOU ARE RIGHT! The iconset is no longer in a sidepanel, but it is moved to an icon browser window.

- icon groups are seperated under different tabs

- the icons per group are in a grid of at most 8 columns and as many rows as are needed, in a scrollable area. The maximum size of an icon in this view is 64*64 pixels, larger icons are scaled down. This means no more icon names, you see the icons themselves only (picture having to rename 400 icons after a spritesheet import...).

- you can click icons to select/deselect them. You can perform actions (remove icons, move to group, add to favorites) on a whole selected batch.

- double clicking an icon makes it the active drawing icon.

- right clicking gives a popup menu giving you all options (select all, deselect all, rename iconset, add group, rename group, remove group, add icons, import spritesheet, remove icon(s), move icon(s) to group, replace icon, add to favorites)

A window has the advantage that you can keep it open while drawing. To make working with 400+ icons a little easier however, I am also going to add a 'favorites' side panel where you can freely add icons to from any group. This allows you to simply add the icons you use the most and have them available directly from the editing window.

I am working on it now, screenshots pending.

[Shoonay]

Cool, I hope it'll be like drawing in Deluxe Paint IV for the first time - nice and easy

[gimbal]

Screenshot of the (fully functional) icon browser:



Clean, simple, easy to use and most importantly it is never in the way because you can do with it what you want (hide,minimize). I bound the quick-key combo CTRL+B (b = browser) to this window to either hide or show it. And of course the application remembers the state of this window when you close the application (if the window was shown, what tab you had selected, the size and position of the window).

And now step 2: the favorites sidepanel.

[gimbal]

I updated the last screenshot because I just HAD to show off the fine results of importing a cannon fodder tilesheet I realize that I need to fix two more things:

- make the number of columns in the icon window depend on the maximum width of the icons in stead of a fixed amount of maximum columns (12 at the moment, because 12 * 64 is closest to 800, the maximum amount of pixels I want to use). In the above screenshot you can see that the space is not used optimally yet, I need to make it a little smarter still.

- when performing a spritesheet import, I need to do the first 10 icons and then show that to the user so he can see if the import settings are correct or not.


Other things I added:

- a plugin manager window through which you can add and immediately activate plugins. I am working on making it possible to replace and remove plugins as well, but that requires more high level Java hacking.

- a history sidepanel that shows the editing history. I looked closely at photoshop for this one; a small arrow (that I even brutally stole from Photoshop CS2, the eye icon the layers panel might also seem a bit familiar to some of you) shows where you are in the history. When you undo/redo edits, the arrow will move up and down the list.

And also a list of bugfixes / added sanity checks. I am currently working hard to make the app alpha ready, and it will be as soon as I cannot find any more obvious bugs myself.

[gimbal]

Huh! I changed the spacing of the iconset window according to what I described in the previous post... and check out the result:



All of a sudden there is order in the chaos! It must be fate.

[Marcuz]

greatness!

[gimbal]

Okay, I have finished the icon favorites side panel. I am going to implement the growing and shrinking of a map, and after that I am not going to add new features anymore in this release, I am going to strictly concentrate on bugfixing and solving gui-glitches (not that I know of any), after which I will upload the first alpha release. So it should be soon.


For the next alpha release I am going to work on three major issues:

- you can only use one iconset in a map. This is bullshit, you should be able to select any icon from any iconset. From the icon browser you will get a combo box with all the iconsets and you can select one freely.

- icons are strictly rectangular at the moment. If an icon has transparent edges, the program should ignore those transparent areas and allow you to paint other icons over them.

- Icon "presets". It will be possible to merge several icons into one so you can paint them as if they are one large icon (but in effect you will still be painting separate icons, only multiple in one click). For example in the cannon fodder spritesheet above the house is separated into 11 different tiles, but you will always want to paint them in one go. This will also allow the creation of easy ground / water templates so you can paint large areas at once. This is where the previous point about transparent areas plays a major role.

[Thalion]

waiting for the first release to test.

[dlfrsilver]

yay it's time to rip some coin op games with the right palettes, and put that
back the miggy yahoo ^^ !

[gimbal]

well I squashed around 25 major bugs and I further improved the flexibility of the program (most of all you can undo/redo a lot more things now), plus the program now has a nifty help system built in which is especially useful when you just get to know the program. Every component, window and dialog of the program has a question mark icon that you can click to bring up the help page about that specific component.

I am feeling highly confident now that the program will be stable for testing... but I am going to be unavailable next week because of my girlfriend coming to visit me from Spain, TOMORROW So I will upload the alpha 1 release the week after that. No offense, but the last thing I will be thinking about starting from tomorrow is touching a computer

edit: well the least I can do is show off some of the last screenshots.

[girv]

Looking forward to it

Just out of curiosity, what will you be thinking of touching ?

[dlfrsilver]

ahahah lol !!!! The thing MOST MEN on the earth love to touch
hehehe, we just can't plague him for that, right Girv ?

[Shoonay]

@gimb: but, if you'd released it now, we would have time to do some serious beta-testing and prepeared a HUGE bugreport ready for your comeback

PS: Have fun, matey!

[Thalion]

At least he is touching his Amiga.

[gimbal]

At least he is touching his Amiga.

Ha! Thumbs up for that one, very clever

but, if you'd released it now, we would have time to do some serious beta-testing and prepeared a HUGE bugreport ready for your comeback

Unfortunately my list of bugs to fix is not empty yet You have no idea how many stupid scenarios I have to take care of. For example: I actually had to write a check to see if the icon you are painting is not larger than the map, or else bad things are going to happen (drawing the cursor out of boundaries of the map for example, which means I am writing into memory that does not belong to my program)... an incredibly stupid and silly and rare situation, but it MIGHT just happen that someone has an icon that is 256*256 pixels and wants to paint it in a map that is smaller :s So I had to fix that by not allowing you to select an icon that is larger than the map itself, you will get an error notice when it happens.

And now I am getting some sleep, because in 3.5 hours I have to call my "Amiga" out of bed, and 2 hours later I have to get out of bed myself to start the long journey to the airport

(I live in the middle of nowhere and I am a student, so why would I need a car, public transportation is free. But it does mean I have to travel 15 minutes by bus, 30 minutes by subway and another 50 minutes by train to get to the Amsterdam airport, excluding waiting times).