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DS homebrew announcements > DuSTED

#148527 - nikarul - Sun Jan 06, 2008 8:38 pm

Hey all,

Awhile ago I started working on a simple DS tile editor that runs on the DS. I haven't touched it in awhile, but I decided to go ahead and release the source code after updating it to compile and run with devkitARM r21.

I got it to the point where I could edit simple tiles and display them on the top screen as a hardware tile (or tiles, depending on the view mode) and save/load tiles to SRAM. It also has basic undo/redo functionality, as well as the ability to view consecutive tiles to see how their borders match.

The user interface is very primitive so be sure to read the README for how it works. It doesn't have any way of editing the palette yet, so its usefulness as an art tool is limited, but I'm hoping someone might find it a useful base to work off of if they are interested in extending its functionality.

You can find it at http://digitalbytes.net/projects.php#dusted

-Michael

#148641 - fatman999 - Tue Jan 08, 2008 4:07 am

its really useful i cant wait til its finished
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#148646 - tepples - Tue Jan 08, 2008 5:20 am

Do you plan on adding any tile formats other than 16-color GBA/DS and 256-color packed pixels? If so, my romhacker cousin might love this.
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-- Where is he?
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#148672 - nikarul - Tue Jan 08, 2008 7:20 pm

Hmm, I hadn't given other formats much thought. What other formats would be useful?

-Michael

#148689 - tepples - Tue Jan 08, 2008 10:56 pm

nikarul wrote:
Hmm, I hadn't given other formats much thought. What other formats would be useful?

  • 1-bit (1 bit per pixel, big endian) used for PC BIOS compatible fonts in "DOS mode"
  • NES (2 bits per pixel, planes interleaved by tile)
  • Game Boy (2 bits per pixel, planes interleaved by row)
  • Sega Master System (4 bits per pixel, planes interleaved by row)
  • Super NES/TurboGrafx (4 bits per pixel, planes interleaved once by row and once by tile)
  • Virtual Boy (just like GBA/DS 4-bit except with 2 bits per pixel) some GBA games use this format because GBA BIOS BitUnPack() supports it
  • Sega Genesis (just like GBA/DS 4-bit except the nibbles are in the other order within the byte)
  • Windows bitmap

Feel free to refer to the source code of 8TED to learn about these other formats.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#148698 - kusma - Wed Jan 09, 2008 12:39 am

tepples wrote:

Feel free to refer to the source code of 8TED to learn about these other formats.

Most of those formats sounds to me like the job of a converter-tool, not an editing-tool. But that might just be me.

#148862 - Lynx - Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:07 pm

But, they each have their own color pallet limitations that would be handy when creating tiles.
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#148872 - kusma - Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:45 pm

Lynx wrote:
But, they each have their own color pallet limitations that would be handy when creating tiles.

Isn't that just a matter of limiting the colors used? I can't see any other details in the list tepples made...

#148916 - tepples - Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:38 pm

kusma wrote:
Lynx wrote:
But, they each have their own color pallet limitations that would be handy when creating tiles.

Isn't that just a matter of limiting the colors used?

That, and:
  1. finding the location and format of graphics within the file
  2. extracting the graphics from the file
  3. reinserting the graphics into the file

Conventional tile editors such as 8TED, YY-CHR, and Tile Layer Pro can operate in more than one data format. This lets them display the file in various modes so that the user can do A, and edit the file directly so that the user can more easily do B and C. Under a typical use case, the user would would reset into the tile editor, make some changes, reset into nesDS, test the changes, and repeat.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.