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2D All the way! / Play Mapper Mini (PLayBasic)

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Kevin Picone
21
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 22nd Oct 2005 16:26 Edited at: 25th Mar 2011 06:43
Play Mapper Mini

Since, we've been having problems the existing PlayMapper project we've decided to replace it. The aim is to keep the new tool as simple and as user friendly as possible. However I don't have a huge amount of time to invest in it, so please don't expect miracles.

So far, there's nothing to show really, mostly prep work. We'll post shots/betas (since it's open source) as we go along.


Some basic things i'd like to get in are stuff like

* Layer Support
* Anim support
* Some block + (perhaps some) Vector collision support.


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BlinkOk
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2005 16:56
Is this an IDE thing or a language thing?

P4 2.8Ghz, 2Gb, 128Mb Radeon Pro, Dark Basic PRO
Kevin Picone
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Location: Australia
Posted: 22nd Oct 2005 17:11 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:15
Neither, it's a tool thing. So users can make maps without having to build their own editors. Although they're welcome too if they like.


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BlinkOk
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2005 17:35
ok. like a map editor. will it generate code or a table?

P4 2.8Ghz, 2Gb, 128Mb Radeon Pro, Dark Basic PRO
Kevin Picone
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2005 17:46 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:16
It'll load/save map files. Then users will just use the provided load/view map functions to display created maps in their games.

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 24th Oct 2005 19:14 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:16
Progress,

Been working on implementing basic editing. So far all you can really do is navigate around the map, draw tiles (but you can't select tiles), clear a layer, but the cool thing is the drawing has UNDO support. Which already goes a long way to improving the feel of the program.

Here's some (off the top of my head) things I want to get into it.

Draw Modes

* Individual Tile drawing (Left Click to draw tile, Right Click = select from map) Done
* Box Done
* Line Done
*Circle
* Brushes (grab, paste)


Tools
* UNDO Done
* Clear Layer Done
* Resize Layer
* Shift Layer
* Add/Delete/Swap/Copy Layer
* Merge Layer ( overwrite foreground layer over background)
* Optimize Layers (remove obscured hidden blocks )


Block gfx
* Load/Import Blks set
* Merge Blks (append a blk set to
* Export Blks


and whatever I can fit into it.


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Kevin Picone
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 28th Nov 2005 15:56 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:17
Play Mapper V0.15 (Alpha)

Here's the first warts'n'all public alpha of Play Mapper. Thus far I've been focusing more on the feel of the application than features. While many of the core features are implemented, it's still missing custom dialogs. So those features where the user would need to enter input are not included. (Ie, Resize layer, Setting the mask colour etc etc )

Control wise the editor functions completely from the mouse. There are currently no keyboard short cuts.


Included Stuff
* Basic tools (Tile,Line,Box,Circle,Brush)
* Tile import
* Multi tile Selection
* Context driven pop up menus (right click)
* Load/Save Format (hunk based.)


To Do List

* Animation Support
* Improve brush support
* Mult Layer Support
* Resize/Shift/optimize layers
* Append Blocks
* Import Layer
* Export Blocks/ALyers
* Support for compressed file hunks.
etc etc


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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 2nd Dec 2005 16:59 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:18
mr joe
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Joined: 12th Aug 2004
Location: Edinburger, Scotland. DBC
Posted: 2nd Dec 2005 19:24
This tool looks pretty handy. I was thinking I might try and make something similar to make maps for my game. The 'feel' as you said is good, It's easy to use (though obviously not too many features yet). I definitely think it'll be well received, I'd use it I know.

A few features that would be really cool to see perhaps:
- In the export function, let users export .txt files, or similar. I don't use playBasic but if you could export the seperate layers (just as numbers) it would still be a really useful tool.
- Support for different sizes of tiles.

But good work so far.
Kevin Picone
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 4th Dec 2005 13:29 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:19
Quote: "A few features that would be really cool to see perhaps:
- In the export function, let users export .txt files, or similar. I don't use playBasic but if you could export the seperate layers (just as numbers) it would still be a really useful tool.
"


The user will be able to export simple layers in data and possibly a text based form. But since PlayMapper is built for PlayBasic, it won't be available separately.


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Kevin Picone
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 5th Dec 2005 20:14 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:19
Compressed Maps

Been working on some simple (run length + common byte) compression routines that can be used for maps. Their actually set up to pack memory banks, but they should all slot in together pretty well regardless.

Since the packer/depacker are byte based and map tiles are long (integer) based, it means that while it does make a handy saving packing map data, it's certainly not the best solution. So i'm going to implement a Word and Long aligned version. The latter should be ideal for map sections. While not specifically being optimized for the task. So it'll be useful packing other stuff like perhaps array data also.


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Kevin Picone
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 9th Jan 2006 17:34 Edited at: 11th Aug 2010 20:20
Update V0.23

The past few days have been solely invested in getting a usable Play Mapper ready for a quick release.. Been focusing mainly on the file format + layer support, layer controls. While their not brilliant, it does give you the ability to Add/Delete/Move and edit the layers properties fairly easily.

A layer in PlayMapper represents another plane of tiles. Each layer can transparent/animated and be positioned on it's Z within the scene. So you can change the draw order and depths of the layers. Currently All layers are the same size and sit at the same Xpos,Ypos. Which is not ideal really, but given the time allocated for this, i'm going to leave it like that. Will have to update this later anyway.

I'm having a few teething problems with loading the maps back in and getting the GUI to re-init correctly. But with any luck those little annoyances should be cleared up later today.

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