New here

[Uhfgood]

I expected to have to have some sort of validation to join the forums, but this is cool.

My name is Keith Weatherby II, and you (Mr. Marty) probably know me from some emails.  I'm using the SGDK to prototype my new game entitled "Hypno-Joe".  I've made a few mentions of the SGDK in my blog at http://uhfgood.artoo.net (btw you can check out the posts related to Hypno-Joe under the Game Projects catagory).  In any case the fullscreen tile editor keeps crashing on me when I alt-tab too much.  So when going through the tutorial I just grabbed the premade image.  I think it's probably useless for me to use the sgdk's tile editor anyhow as i'm going to be hand drawing my sprites and producing my tiles in a proper image-editor/paint program.  So it all works out.  With the exception of the tile editor, everything seems to be working out.

Well that's all for now I guess.

Keith

[billybob884]

Nice, fresh meat!...

[durnurd]

The full-screen editors were not meant to be used with the Alt-Tab functionality.  If you want to go through the tutorial, the easiest way would be to print it out, get another computer, or memorize it.

[bluemonkmn]

Nevertheless, I don't think I've had the full screen editors crash as a result of using Alt-Tab -- must be a DirectX/Driver problem.  (When in doubt, blame it on something I can't control )

[Uhfgood]

My guess is it's not properly releasing/reallocating resources when switching modes.  I mean I was doing it alot becuase I had to see what I was supposed to be doing.  In any case I should still be able to use the kit.  So I just create a bitmap of no bigger than 128x128 tiles, and no more than 256 tiles total in the set?

Keith

[durnurd]

I assume you mean no bigger than 128x128 pixels per tile and no more than 256 total tiles.

[Uhfgood]

Indeed, sometimes my hands move faster than my brain ;-)

[bluemonkmn]

Well, I don't think I'm really doing any resource allocation.  Most of the Tile Editor is written in VB6, which handles memory management more cleanly.  And the Alt-Tab functionality is built into DirectX (I didn't do anything to support it).  And I suspect that since this doesn't happen everywhere that it is indeed driver-dependent.  But maybe it's just that nobody has used Alt-Tab frequently enough to see the problem.

Anyway, one more thing to check if you create your graphics externally.  Make sure the tileset bitmap is no wider than the display for your game.  The map editor can show you the tileset and scroll vertically if it's too big to see all of it, but it won't scroll horizontally.

[billybob884]

mmm, i've never had a problem with the map editor crashing due to alt-tabbing it, but i have had it crash if you try to scroll via the arrow keys before its loaded, like while its just a blank screen.

[Uhfgood]

Interesting.  BTW alt-tabbing has nothing to do with direct-x at least not in dx7 and previous.  My experience with directdraw, you essentially had to get a lost surface and reload it.  (Surfaces would get lost due to the fact that other programs and in fact windows itself is also sharing the display with your program.)

In any case i don't seem to have any other problems.

Okay so you say the tile sizes can't be bigger than 128x128, the amount of tiles in a set can be no more than 256 and, the width has to be the width of your game's display.  Okay I can deal with that.

I should be able to make a seperate "tileset" for the actual game sprites right?

Keith

[billybob884]

yea, you can have seperate tilesets for sprites, and i believe that the maximum size for sprites is quite large. i personally have a sprite (or two) in the upper thousands (though its only like 2 frames)

[durnurd]

And of course you can make many tilesets for different layers to make it look like you have more than 256 tiles in the tileset.

A note:  Sprites can use different tilesets for each state (up, up-left, etc.) if you wanted.  Each sprite can use its own tileset, or however you wanted to do it.

[bluemonkmn]

Yes, the limits you described are good limits to stick to and should work for all uses with tiles and sprites.  But I will also mention (since I haven't done so recently) that these are not hard limits, just recommendations.  You can create tilesets of practically unlimited size (I think one of the Guildhall games I looked at a year or two ago had one tile for their whole huge scrolling background!).  You can have more than 256 graphics in a tileset if you only intend to use it with sprites (I think) because sprites use an integer to store the graphic index instead of a byte.  You can probably also use tilesets wider than the screen if you don't need to select them as tiles in the map editor.  The main reason for the 128x128 pixel limit is because many rectangles in the SGDK UI can't show graphics larger than that.  But there's not much else stopping you from creating huge tiles.

So, the limits are a good idea, but not absolutely necessary if you need to go beyond them.