#9766 - Nessie - Sat Aug 16, 2003 11:40 pm
I've been working on a map editor for quite a while and had always intended on releasing it at some point in case it was of any use to anyone. Though it is admittedly being completely tailored to our (game projects) specific needs, so...
Even though the tool is not currently supported, I wouldn't mind bug reports or suggestions. And as the website describes, certain features have been scaled back for now. The download version only has support for 16 colour tiles and maps up to 128x128.
There's a sample project and some very basic help documentation to get someone started.
http://www.geocities.com/gba_dev/index.htm
Finally, if anyone is interested in helping support the tool, I could arrange to get you the source code.
Last edited by Nessie on Wed Aug 20, 2003 4:35 am; edited 1 time in total
#9834 - Cranial Underflow - Tue Aug 19, 2003 3:16 pm
Hey, this is pretty sweet. Is there a full version or source code available for it? Also, what about the artwork? It's surprisingly like a mini-project I'm just starting and if you don't mind I could use it at least as temp artwork for it.
BTW, found a small bug. Should I just e-mail you or what?
#9837 - Nessie - Tue Aug 19, 2003 5:12 pm
There is something of a "full" version. Mostly it has collision layer features which seemed like they'd be very specific to our project and maybe not of much use to anyone else.
Source code is currently not available though if someone were interested in helping support the tool, they would obviously have access to the code. Also, if a commercial type project is interested in the tool, I'd be willing to provide the source code for free as long as they would return the "favor" by sharing with me any improvements they made to the tool. I may, at some point, just release the code generally.
Heh heh, the artwork huh? Um, I did that in about an hour so if you or anyone else wants to use it for anything, feel free. I can assume no responsibility for any heckling that might ensue from using it. Seriously though, do what you want with it.
Hmmm, the About Box of the tool has a contact link...you can use that for submitting any bugs I guess.
Cheers
#9838 - tepples - Tue Aug 19, 2003 5:28 pm
| Nessie wrote: |
| Also, if a commercial type project is interested in the tool, I'd be willing to provide the source code for free as long as they would return the "favor" by sharing with me any improvements they made to the tool. |
A class of copyright licenses called "copyleft licenses" can protect the freedom of the software in the way you describe. If anybody distributes a copy of a copyleft covered program in binary form, he has to offer to distribute a copy of the corresponding source code as well. That way, any improvements to the source code will eventually circulate back to the author. The most popular copyleft license by far is the GNU General Public License.
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#9854 - Cranial Underflow - Wed Aug 20, 2003 3:39 am
Kudos man, I got the hang of this thing pretty fast. It's so simple yet powerful. And that GBA screen mask thing is a very cool idea for getting an idea of how my level will really look in my game. My only gripe is the flood fill tool. Looks like it's not done or something?
#9855 - Nessie - Wed Aug 20, 2003 4:31 am
Glad you are finding it useful.
Anyway, the flood fill tool is sort of done and has been for a couple of days but there are some other things I'm adding/fixing before I'll upload a new release. Things are still changing kind of a lot so I don't want to have a new build uploaded every day.
But I guess if you are really desperate for it now you could e-mail me and I could package it up for you, otherwise, just hang tight for a couple more days, heh.
tepples, thanks for the tip. I'll consider that option.
#9976 - RaBBi - Sat Aug 23, 2003 8:55 pm
Great job Nessie !
I was searching for an ultimate map Editor with good export for using with HaM and I find it with the current version of yours !
I really thank you, I'm going to keep on developping my RPG project with it and waiting for the next version impatiently ^^
As I am a newbie in gba dev, I try easy things for the moment, and I didn't really think about collisions for example, but I noticed there's an option about it in mapEdit 0.92 and my little finger says me that it will be a ptretty nice tool in the future :)
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#10103 - Nessie - Wed Aug 27, 2003 2:53 am
Not quite the update I had wanted, but v0.93 is now available.
Hopefully v0.94 will be a bit more substantial, having Undo/Redo, etc...but there are enough changes to make v0.93 worthwhile. Most notably is the tiling paint brush mode, described in the updated "Help" doc.
#10205 - Corum - Fri Aug 29, 2003 2:03 pm
I tried the latest 2 versions of your tool.
IMHO is a very good editor, and I think the main strenght is the 'F' option, along with the clear code generation.
A nice plus should be a .bin generator for testing the levels directly on the device/emulator.
Code generation for this purpose should be even better.
I don't like the screen flashing when the editor gains the focus against other apps.
The features of this tool are perfect for a freeware product.
Just a suggestion: don't make it commercial. The community will be grateful. :)
Bye.
Corum.
#10208 - Nessie - Fri Aug 29, 2003 4:20 pm
Thanks for the feedback Corum, there's quite a bit to add feature-wise and many fixes to make, so I'll keep your suggestions in mind as the tool progresses.
Anyway. I've just released v0.94 which is quite a huge upgrade. It adds collision layers and flag painting features, plus the max map size is now 256x256. A few other minor things here and there...so see the "help" file packaged with the tool as that describes the new features (both in v0.93 and v0.94) in more detail. I've also updated the old included sample to have a collision layer, etc.
Get the tool here: http://www.geocities.com/gba_dev
Regarding going commercial, I can't really see doing that any time soon nor have I even had any offers to do so. So, for the near future (and probably beyond, heh), MapEd is free for non-commercial use (the homebrew community).
Cheers,
Jeff
#10245 - antysix - Sun Aug 31, 2003 11:37 am
Thanks Nessie, this really is the best map editor available.
Just one thing: Can you remove the restriction that tilesets must be a power of 2, as you describe it. Now I can't load my letter tileset (which is 8 by 672).
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#10255 - Nessie - Sun Aug 31, 2003 7:41 pm
Hmmm, I always wished that 3D cards would support textures that were multiples of 2 ( or even 4 or 8 )....but they don't so I'm stuck with limiting tilesets to powers of 2. Unless someone knows something about OpenGL that I don't (which is quite possible, heh), there's nothing I can do about that particular limitation.
One thing you could do, though, would be to pad your tileset out to be 8x1024, leaving the last 350 or so tiles just blank. If you don't use some of the tiles in a layer/map, mapEd currently will not export those unused tiles to the BG_Tile array.
Cheers
#10259 - Cranial Underflow - Sun Aug 31, 2003 10:25 pm
Whoa, I just upgraded from 93 to 94a and 93 was great, but 94a is awesome! But again, I do have two small gripes, ehe.
1 )Undo would be super nice.
2) The flag painting customisation doesn't seem finished?
#10260 - Nessie - Sun Aug 31, 2003 10:40 pm
Well, glad some people are finding it useful.
1) Yes, Undo has been in the works for a while, but I don't want a shoddy undo system, one that you can't always be sure whether it will work correctly or not, so it'll just take some time to get right. As you may have seen in the latest build, there are stubs for both Undo and Redo, so my goal is to support multiple levels of both.
2) Ah yeah, I forget what I wrote in the help doc, but flag painting is bare bones right now and even the tech programmer on our project mentioned that it would be nice if it were a bit better...so...it shouldn't take too long to improve.
BTW, I could use some help from talented people in the community...but I'll just post those details over in the Help Wanted section...
#10307 - Nessie - Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:20 am
Version 0.94b ? added Zoom in/out, Layer Data shift, and Show Flag option for collision layers.
Fixed ? AutoPaint .CLL data option (mapView)
Fixed ? Zoom levels above 6 weren?t clearing their checks correctly on the quick menu (mapView/tileView)
Fixed ? External flag definition file?can now properly assign mapEd internal icons and specify a per flag custom tint. Format of this file is completely different
#10566 - Nessie - Tue Sep 09, 2003 4:10 am
v0.95 Uploaded.....mostly lots of little fixes....couple of minor new features.
#10584 - goro - Tue Sep 09, 2003 8:35 pm
Cool. You're editor is great. I'll grab a download now!!
Thanks Nessie.
#10585 - Saj - Tue Sep 09, 2003 8:38 pm
I think it's brilliant too. Nice one Nessie.
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