FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Map editor plans?
Goto page 1, 2  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic     Forum Index -> ArcLib
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 12:56 pm    Post subject: Map editor plans? Reply with quote

I noticed on the blog that you have plans for a tile map editor. Do you have a list of features or an idea of what the output format of that would be? I ask because I'm writing a map editor for my game project (Which I will likely end up using Arclib for). This seems like a good opportunity to avoid duplicating effort. The editor is written using Python and PyGTK. Screenshot
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 5:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi,

The map editor I'm using is just one that I'm building into my WarCoders game project.

http://svn.dsource.org/projects/arclib/dev/warcoders/

It is all hotkey based, and currently only allows you to place tiles, but I will have objects being placed in it shortly.

I'm saving the map into an XML file format

http://svn.dsource.org/projects/arclib/dev/warcoders/trunk/game/maps/map.xml

It just saves the tiles that were changed from the default tile. It also allows you to place 'lights' in it. It is pretty much custom designed for a game I'm going to make.

Your map editor looks like it might be farther along then mine. We could try to combine efforts, then a map editor would really have to be a swiss army knife type tool to accommodate different styles of games. What were you thinking?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

clayasaurus wrote:
Hi,
Your map editor looks like it might be farther along then mine. We could try to combine efforts, then a map editor would really have to be a swiss army knife type tool to accommodate different styles of games. What were you thinking?


I think I may have misread your blog post. I thought that you were doing to be making a map editor to work with Arclib in general, not the game in particular. Not that it really matters. Something that's able to create tile maps in an XML file format, place lights, and output shapes for Blaze physics would be useful for pretty most Arclib project. Since it's written in python it shouldn't be to hard to customize it to fit a particular game project... I'll get back to you when I've got version .2 done.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 8:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cool,

Yea, the way I work is I put all the beta features into the games I'm currently making, and then if I can easily generalize them put them into ArcLib.

I'd be happy to add your map editor as an ArcLib extension, however. This goes to anyone who has useful game programming codes they want to share Smile

~ Clay
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 1:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Version 0.2 of the map editor is done.

Features:

  • Create tile maps from png tile sets
  • Layers
  • Saving information for a single paralax background
  • XML file output
  • Creation of polygon-based collision information
  • Placement of lights
  • Written in Python with GTK+ and Cairo. No need to re-compile for other operating systems (It was written on 64-bit Linux)
  • "Mostly" Gnome HIG compliant. (It's not user-hostile...)

Limitations:

  • Cannot move shapes
  • Cannot preview the effects of background images
  • Cannot add entities
  • Cannot move or edit lights once placed without manually editing XML
  • Cannot open files from command-line
  • Cannot remove tiles
  • Not anywhere near complete


Screenshot

Download


Bug reports and feature suggestions (especially feature suggestions) welcome. (Report bugs by PM... At least until I get a project site set up for my game here at dsource)
_________________
Current projects: Project Fermitas, Arctographer tile map editor, Arclib game library.
Gentoo | Textadept
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Mon Feb 02, 2009 10:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Version 0.2.1 is done. Nothing new except bug fixes.

Download

Please give it a try and leave some feedback, especially on the topic of what you'd like to see in a tile map editor.
_________________
Current projects: Project Fermitas, Arctographer tile map editor, Arclib game library.
Gentoo | Textadept
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright, I'll give it a try once I get the chance to download python + pyGTK
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got it running on a *nix machine : )

However, I can't quite figure it out. Is there an example file that I could load?

~ Clay
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

clayasaurus wrote:
I got it running on a *nix machine : )

However, I can't quite figure it out. Is there an example file that I could load?

~ Clay


Here's an example file:
http://www.hackerpilot.org/src/game_project/map_editor/example.xml
And here's what it should look like when loaded:
http://www.hackerpilot.org/src/game_project/map_editor/example.png

The open button on the tabs on the right lets you open png images to use as tile sets. File->New lets you create a new map. Width and height on that dialog are in tiles, and the tile size parameter is how wide/high each tile is in pixels. Layers determines how many layers the map has.

To add tiles to a map select them from the right pane. (You can grab a single tile or a rectangle of them.) Then click where you want it to go on the map. If you click and drag, the selection will be repeated on the map. Currently there is no way to remove tiles from the UI, so to get rid of something just overwrite it with a transparent tile.

The green polygon icon starts collision drawing mode. Left click to add points, and right click to add the final point. Any shapes that would be concave (and thus make Blaze unhappy) are colored red.

The Light bulb icon starts light drawing mode... This really doesn't do much at the moment except for placing lights with default values I found in the arclib light code.

The arrow icon allows you to select collision shapes. These can be deleted by pressing the delete key when the shape is highlighted (blue).

The interface for most of these tools needs some a lot of work, but then again that's why I call it a 0.2 release...

Let me know if you have any more questions.
_________________
Current projects: Project Fermitas, Arctographer tile map editor, Arclib game library.
Gentoo | Textadept
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, how is this coming along so far? I'm keeping an eye on this still. Probably won't start to do much with it until I get myself a dedicated linux box, which should be sometime around August or so.

I'm going to start developing other tools (Sprite Editor, GUI Editor) as my next step and it would be nice to have a map editor.

Would it interest you at all if I do come up with a design for a map editor, except using ArcLib's GUI? Or are you pretty set on using pyGTK?

Ideally I would be able to have a map editor use Arc's GUI, but the GUI Editor + more GUI features are going to be required for this to happen.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I haven't done much of anything on the map editor, or any of my other hobby projects for that matter, since the 0.2 release. I'm currently a full-time college student and a part-time flight instructor. My schedule is a mess.

You'd be making the ArcLib-based map editor for the purposes of a real-time preview of things like lighting and physics, right?
_________________
Current projects: Project Fermitas, Arctographer tile map editor, Arclib game library.
Gentoo | Textadept
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not going to be making a map editor anytime soon, other editors will come first (GUI + Sprite).

I'm pondering whether a generalized map editor should be made, but it might be better to have many map editors for many different styles of games and then folks can just use custom editors, or build on an existing one.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

clayasaurus wrote:
I'm not going to be making a map editor anytime soon, other editors will come first (GUI + Sprite).

I'm pondering whether a generalized map editor should be made, but it might be better to have many map editors for many different styles of games and then folks can just use custom editors, or build on an existing one.


That's sort of what my plan was. Build a core that just places tiles and physics, and make it easy for game authors to write extensions. Python is nice for this, I think, because it doesn't require any re-compiling.

I've started to write a small amout of code for displaying the tile map. My idea is to make this an ArcLib extension, since so many games would need tile map drawing capability. (I also plan on adding support for loading portions of images, as was requested in another thread, as this would be necessary for using tile sets.)

The only disadvantage to using PyGTK that I can see is that it doesn't work on the Mac yet.
_________________
Current projects: Project Fermitas, Arctographer tile map editor, Arclib game library.
Gentoo | Textadept
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SirAlaran



Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
Location: Silicon Valley

PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2009 1:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just thought I'd let you all know that this project isn't dead. I'm in a bit of a bug-killing and refactoring phase. I do have some fun plans for the next release though: parallax backgrounds, animated tiles, and physics exporting (Blaze static shapes and fluids).
_________________
Current projects: Project Fermitas, Arctographer tile map editor, Arclib game library.
Gentoo | Textadept
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic     Forum Index -> ArcLib All times are GMT - 6 Hours
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group