New tool for developers: PCEMAP

[nodtveidt]

After countless bouts of frustration with mappy, my wife convinced me (mainly to stop my incessant bitching and moaning) to write a new general editor for PCE mapping. Here's some screenshots:






It's only a few hours old right now so it's a work-in-progress but it's coming along nicely so far.

[peperocket]

Congratulation !!!!  Usefull idea

Hope we could use it soon 

[2X4]

That's f*cking sweet!  Now if only I knew how to use it! 

[nodtveidt]

Quite frankly, I'm not going out of my way to make it "dummy-proof". It's a developer's tool, so it's not exactly going to be the most user-friendly thing ever, but it's also not going to require a manual the size of the UNIX standard to use. Anyone who's got a grasp of 16-color PCX files should be able to handle importing tilesets, which is probably the most complex aspect of the editor. The only other complex detail is mapfile generation...you specify the width and height of the map in 16x16 tiles (since this is what HuC generally expects to work with) and it spits out a raw map file and a tile palette index, both of which are included into your program with the #incbin directive. Yes, this editor is designed to be used with HuC, and will be available standalone as well as packaged with HuiCide...whenever it gets finished.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Hey, that tree you have on the rubber stamp thingy, why can't we have those in MS as well!  I dig that tree!

[nodtveidt]

Hehe that tree is from the RPG Maker XP RTP, I thought it fitting for that particular dialog...

[2X4]

Nod, I implore you, you MUST finish HuiCide! 

[nodtveidt]

HuiCide will be back on the burners once Mysterious Song goes to beta.

[nodtveidt]

I've spent more time working on PCEMAP today. It now saves and loads mapfile projects. I managed to draw out an entire map for Mysterious Song using it. Once I add the mapfile generation function, I'll let go of a prototype build so y'all can mess with it. Right now I'm adding Tile Swap (exchange one tile texture for another), Tile Shift (shift a range of tiles in the map array), and Map Shift (move the map around) functions. It's simply amazing that ALL of these simplistic functions are completely missing from the build of mappy that's any good to use (1.4).

EDIT: Here's that map I was talking about that I drew up...

[nodtveidt]

Another update...Tile Swap, Tile Replace, and Floodfill are all working now. Mapfile generation is coded in but is currently untested. Hopefully it all works according to plan...I'll post another update later on, and possibly a prototype of the program.

[FM-77]

Nod! You just showed them secret stuff from.... from.... I can't say it!!

[Equuskia]

After countless bouts of frustration with mappy, my wife convinced me (mainly to stop my incessant bitching and moaning) to write a new general editor for PCE mapping.

And you wouldn't believe how well it stopped the bitching and moaning. 

[nodtveidt]

Okay, here it is...the early prototype of PCEMAP. I figured that since I had used it for most of the day without making too many changes to it, might as well let it go.

http://www.frozenutopia.com/pcemapproto.rar

I have an installer version ready too, but our connection is being a complete ass tonight and it's taking forever to upload. The prototype URL above only contains the EXE and the manifest, it doesn't include the runtime dependencies (VS98 runtimes). If the executable doesn't work (no error messages, but the program just doesn't start up), just delete the manifest file, it's not essential.

[peperocket]

Working without manifest file, gonna try it 

[peperocket]

Don't know if I've got 2 left hands but erase button and new map don't seem to work for me ..