#74089 - alexge - Thu Mar 02, 2006 7:39 am
Note:
The Map-Data can be straight copied to Rotational Backgrounds, because there the Map-Data consists of one byte per Tile.
Support for Text-Background with horizonal/vertical tile flip will be added soon, but first only in 256 Color mode.
#74091 - gauauu - Thu Mar 02, 2006 8:52 am
Looks functional but pretty basic so far. The layering system seems pretty good. The only weird thing is when you pull open the menus, it clears the drawing area, which take a couple seconds to redraw. kinda disconcerting.
As far as additional features, I've found that level editing is such tedious work, that you want the editor to make things as quick and easy as possible. So all features should be about efficiency. Some ideas:
ability to define brushes or macros - a lot of the time, people end up using 16x16 tiles instead of the 8x8's. Make it easy to paint with these, or other user-defined shapes. (like to be able to create that bottom strip on the sample map without clicking 8000 times)
zoom out - be able to see the big picture without clicking around
add keyboard shortcuts for switching layers (photoshop style -- one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard..make them one-key left-handed keys (maybe the 1-4 keys?))
Ability to load a file with it's tileset on startup. Your level designers will spend a lot of time tweaking levels....you want them to be able to quickly and easily start the editor and start editing the file. Right now, you have to start the application, load a tileset, then load the map. (maybe a way would be to save some meta-data with the file that will associate a tileset with the map, and allow the app to accept the name of a map file as a command line parameter on startup....that way you can associate the file extension with your app, and double-clicking the file would be enough to start editing)
Anyway, it's definitely usable now. I'll look foward to seeing the next versions....