Author Topic: More editor upgrade ideas  (Read 11349 times)

durnurd

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More editor upgrade ideas
« on: 2007-11-02, 03:23:05 PM »
  • When importing graphics, draw full lines rather than dots.  If, for example, you're importing a circle, none of the dots will touch the actual image, so it's very hard to tell where the tiles will begin and end.
  • If the image is too large to edit at the current magnification,after importing an image (allow the user to)? change the magnification so that it can be edited.
  • When importing an image, make it easier to make minute movements of the selection rectangle.  For example, have a magnified view of the corner, and allow arrow keys to move the starting pixel one pixel at a time.  Also allow for changing the selection size.
  • When making a selection in the graphics editor, do something similar to make it easier to see which pixel the mouse is pointing at, and which row and column will be cut off if a rectangular selection is to be made here.
  • Allow for arrow keys to move a selected portion of a graphic 1 pixel at a time (or part of a pixel if AA is on)
  • After pasting an image before deselecting it, is it possible to allow the Color selection tool and fill tool to work on it?  It's confusing as it is right now with two separate selections going on.
  • After importing an image, if the user wants to import another, default the filename to the previously used image.
  • Allow for zooming in on frame editing similar to graphics editing for lining up several frames of one graphic more easily.
  • Not sure about this, but can the blue line in the frame editor go behind the graphics instead of in front?  Or make it translucent?
  • If no changes have been made in the frame editor, don't prompt to save changes when going back to the frameset editor.
  • When dragging frames into the tile properties from the "Available Frames" if the frame is taller than the Frame list, the frame list window jumps up and down.
  • Previewing an animation of a frame that goes in the negative Y direction cuts off the top of the picture
  • Dropping down the Mapped Tiles list, if the list goes the full height of the screen or more, the mouse will overlap the list and will disappear as soon as the mouse is let go.
  • When importing a tileset, the "Select All" and "Select None" buttons do nothing
  • When editing a map, would it be possible to highlight the area that the tile takes up (with a translucent blue square or something) as you are placing tiles so that you know which tile you're changing (and maybe make the tile that it would replace disappear so you know which one is going away)
« Last Edit: 2007-11-02, 03:58:07 PM by durnurd »
Edward Dassmesser

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #1 on: 2007-11-02, 04:47:37 PM »
Some more:

When previewing an animation, changing the background color doesn't work if no animation occurs (i.e. if it's just a multi-frame static tile)
Edward Dassmesser

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #2 on: 2007-11-02, 08:33:15 PM »
When editing a map, if you add a new tile to a list which was previously unmapped and defaulted to the frame value, then go back to editing the map (without closing the map editor window) it will show up as the new tile in the selection window, but will show up as the old frame when placing it on the map.  Closing and reopening the map editor fixes this.
Edward Dassmesser

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #3 on: 2007-11-05, 05:30:01 PM »
The ability to split and merge tilesets and framesets would be particularly handy, I think.  So, for example, I could create several different tilesets for several different groups of objects, then create a conglomerate tileset that uses whichever groups of items I need for a particular map on a single layer (for solidity purposes).

Or (and this is probably less likely) the ability to lock two layers with two different tilesets but the same scroll rate together so that the solidity from both layers applies to either layer.

Also, when editing frames, I sometimes get "Error drawing transformed graphic" errors popping up twice in a row when I go into the frame editor view, but the matrix is perfectly fine.  I think it has to do with the selected background frame from a previous view of the frame editor.  And every time I tab away from the screen to type this message and tab back, another copy of the message shows up.  I've got four messageboxes saying the same thing now.  Five now.
Edward Dassmesser

bluemonkmn

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #4 on: 2007-11-07, 07:34:55 AM »
I did a number of the simple improvements and then implemented better tile "hovering" in the map editor because it has always bugged me that when you have an empty tile selected (or a partly/mostly transparent tile), you can't really preview what you're doing properly.  So I finally fixed that, and I gotta say, it's a lot nicer to work with now, particularly on the isometric map where it was hard to tell what tile you were hovering over/under.  the copy/paste function also properly shows which tiles will be affected according to whether you're doing a transparent paste or a regular paste.  That's all for this morning.  I'll check in these changes ASAP.

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #5 on: 2007-11-07, 05:45:53 PM »
I do like the lines for importing.  Hopefully you get a chance to implement some version of the other suggestions, because some people still might not get which tile gets the pixels that are directly under the lines.  A preview or zoom or nudge or all three would be helpful eventually.

Also, there's a discrepancy (or, at least I think there is) in the imports.  Importing a graphic can import from any graphic type, and importing full sheets is the same, but the file filter on importing full sheets is .png only.

I used to be able to resize the "Background Frame" window, which was nice so I could actually see the frames in it (the default size is too small if working with larger frames).  That functionality disappeared when I got the latest from CVS.
« Last Edit: 2007-11-07, 06:01:01 PM by durnurd »
Edward Dassmesser

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #6 on: 2007-11-07, 10:20:49 PM »
OK, finally checked things in just now.  These changes went in:
  • Do not prompt to save frame in frameset editor if no changes have been made.
  • Do not allow graphic browser to jitter when frame/tile being dragged is larger than the height of the browser.
  • Remember the last file name for importing graphic cells.
  • When drawing tiles in the map editor, display the preview as a replacement of existing tiles instead of overlapping existing tiles.
  • Make the Select All and Select None buttons work in the Tileset Importer.

Also, I don't see any problem resizing the background frame window.  It works fine here.

I don't see the need for splitting and merging tilesets and framesets.  The purpose of tilesets is so that you can re-use frames from a frameset without creating a whole copy of the whole frameset.  So if you want multiple tilesets, why not just create multiple tilesets based on the same frameset?  (It just occurred to me, I can't think of a good reason to have more than one frameset in a project except for the fact that you might have imported frames from multiple sources.)

Are you still getting "Error drawing transformed graphic"?  I thought I fixed something like that before releasing the beta, but maybe it was more recent.

I think a little trial and error when importing graphics is acceptable so I'm not in too big a hurry to implement upgrades to the graphics importing process.  I have more important things to deal with.  I wonder if I should make more importable sprite templates for more of the sprite types that 1.x had (follow left wall etc)... looks like Morgengrauen was disappointed to lose those.  I thought they weren't particularly useful templates but...?

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #7 on: 2007-11-07, 10:46:44 PM »
Okay, confession time.

The reason I wanted to have the ability to split tilesets up is because I put all of the tiles for the graphics set into one tileset, and they should probably be in different tilesets, and I don't want to have to redefine all of them or edit the .SGDK2 file.  Maybe the ability to quickly and easily copy (large numbers of) tiles from tileset to tileset? Same with frames.
Edward Dassmesser

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #8 on: 2007-11-08, 06:39:31 AM »
Would it work to export the tileset, then re-import it with a different name and delete the tiles you don't want?

Tanja

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #9 on: 2007-11-08, 09:31:43 AM »
what`s up, do the "checked in" things mean, there will be a new version soon?

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #10 on: 2007-11-08, 10:42:02 AM »
Reimporting the tileset works in my case.  What if somebody need to go the other way, though?  If, for example, someone has two tilesets that they want on the same layer (for solidity and overlapping reasons).

When adding a layer, when setting the offset, it seems like it's setting the offset of the first layer.

I added a layer (Z-Index 0)
I added a second layer.  During the wizard, when moving my mouse around on step 5 (the offset part) it was moving the layer I had added in the previous step.  I didn't need to set an offset so I continued (Z-Index 1)
Same thing happened when I added a third layer (moving only layer 0)
« Last Edit: 2007-11-08, 10:55:14 AM by durnurd »
Edward Dassmesser

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #11 on: 2007-11-09, 06:44:11 AM »
what`s up, do the "checked in" things mean, there will be a new version soon?

Not necessarily.  It just means the source code has been updated on the server for others who want to access the most current source code.  But updates can be released any time.  If/when I think that some significant changes have been added that people should see/test, then I might do another release.  But I might do another release soon because it has been a while and a number of small changes have been included.

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #12 on: 2007-11-13, 05:29:23 AM »
Reimporting the tileset works in my case.  What if somebody need to go the other way, though?  If, for example, someone has two tilesets that they want on the same layer (for solidity and overlapping reasons).

Seems like a feature, so I'll probably postpone that until a later release now that SGDK2 is in beta.  I'm trying to do mostly bug fixes now.

When adding a layer, when setting the offset, it seems like it's setting the offset of the first layer.

I fixed the layer wizard so it skips that step when adding a new layer (because there's no tile data until the layer is added, so there's nothing to preview).  Positioning existing layers should work, though.  I also added a warning about positioning a layer whose scroll rate is not 1x1 because scrolling is off when the display is not the same size as the real display.  (For example, if the scroll rate is 0x0, you can't position the layer anywhere outside the initial view no matter how far you scroll... scrolling has no effect on the 0x0 layer.  But the display won't show you an area the size of the display that you'll have, so it may be necessary to temporarily set the scroll rate to 1x1 or something.)

The fix is checked in.

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #13 on: 2007-11-13, 05:32:13 AM »
Dropping down the Mapped Tiles list, if the list goes the full height of the screen or more, the mouse will overlap the list and will disappear as soon as the mouse is let go.

What causes the list to be so tall?  Big tiles?  Should this list revert to just showing numbers if the tiles are larger than a certain size?

durnurd

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Re: More editor upgrade ideas
« Reply #14 on: 2007-11-13, 10:22:08 AM »
They were indeed large tiles.  I don't know if that's what caused it though.  Maybe the preview should be moved elsewhere, so when you move the mouse over the item in the list, it will update the preview, say, next to the list, and that could also serve as the animation preview rather than a separate window.  Or something.  The preview is somewhat helpful, but the restrictive size of the list makes it less helpful than it could be.
Edward Dassmesser