AuthorTopic: The Tile Wizard Software  (Read 7303 times)

Offline drakus2011

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #10 on: March 24, 2011, 09:31:20 pm
The program can now load and save tiles in directories other than the default Tile folder.  The documentation has been slightly improved.  There have been a few minor fixes and enhancements as well.

Offline drakus2011

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #11 on: March 28, 2011, 08:05:16 am
The Tile Wizard now supports tiles 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 or 64x64 pixels in size.  It is no longer limited to having only four tiles, you can have as many as you need.

Offline Mathias

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #12 on: March 31, 2011, 02:51:21 am
Excellent. Will take a look.

Offline Gamer36

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #13 on: March 31, 2011, 06:12:24 pm
The way of selecting colors is difficult, if not outraging for ppl who are used to PS. A color wheel might help. And, change the app name to "Tile Wizard" instead of "Wizard"?
Pixel Art, what (mostly) all of us are here for.

Offline drakus2011

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #14 on: April 01, 2011, 02:39:34 am
I will look into some other methods of selecting colors very soon.  I just finished programming animation support for the tiles and I'm testing that now.

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Added : Animations and Custom Tile Sizes

Reply #15 on: April 02, 2011, 10:59:37 am
The newest version of The Tile Wizard now supports animations and custom tile sizes!

Offline Mathias

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #16 on: April 03, 2011, 03:40:17 am
(Yikes, set that site bg back to somethin' dark again!)




a) A successful little game dev experiment I guess.
b) It's possible to lose your pig because he's not confined to the viewable area; you can fly out of the screen and never find your way back.
c) When you die, you have to reload the page to start over.
d) No pause (just go barely out of screen for as long as needed, for same effect)
e) Aliens all glide by at the same exact speed. Some varied (but still constant) speeds would be an easy and effective improvement, well within the scope of the project.
f) Since the pig's hitbox covers only the front part of his body it's possible to exploit this by staying behind aliens where they can't hit you and simply fly over them, from behind, and take them out, letting them shoot your invincible rear all they want.
g) Similarly, since aliens don't fire until they're fully in-screen, yet always susceptible to your fire, you can stay at the front of screen and take them out while they're defenseless.
h) You get points for getting hit??
i) E,S,D,F?? Why not the standard W,A,S,D?
j) Piggy's simple cartoony black-outlined illustrated style clashes with the rest of the game pretty bad.
h) Piggy quickly gets overpowered and the aliens no longer stand a chance. Capping aliens on-screen at 5 could maybe be increased.
k) Bacon.


. . .oh wait this is the tile wizard thread . . .



Just getting back into it . . . haven't tried everything yet but . . .

1) Are the two "nag" screens really necessary? Why not a readme in the root DIR with the .jar? Not a huge deal. It is a free, and I am thankful you're sharing it. My little group isn't so fast to give tools away for free, but I think you're doing a good thing.

---PALETTE---
2a) Color picking/management is cumbersome. The way you have to click the "Set Palette Color" square to save the new color into the "Palette" and then click a place on the "Color Quickbar" to set it there. Can we get a more typical color selection method? Look at Photoshop's color picker, or even the default OS color picker. Could your app just call the OS picker?
2b) Need to be able to set a color for the left mouse and different color for right mouse buttons. This will speed up drawing.
2c) Keep numbers on all "Color Quickbar" swatches visible at all times. Find a new way to convey which swatch is currently picked. Pro Motion does it by drawing a white line and black line horizontally across the swatch, in the middle.
2d) Allow users to enter RGB values manually. They may already have a palette and they'll want to get they're palette easily available to draw from. Is the quickest way to do this to load an image a CTRL+CLICK every color in it? What if, instead of only native palette files, you could load an indexed image and grab it's palette/color table automatically, inputting it into the "Palette".
2e) Does a color HAVE to be in the "Color Quickbar" (CQ) before you can draw with it? If so, the CQ is actually the app's drawing palette and the "Palette" is just swatch storage, like Adobe Illustrator.

3) When I want to start a new session with a different tile size I have to quit and restart the app??
4) If I'm on page 20, how do I get back to page 1? Click 'Back', 19 times??
5) When in "Override" mode, placing tiles in the "Tile Tester", how do I select a different tile to paste down without drawing on the tile I select? Why can't you select the top gray title bar that turns green when selected?
6) Needs a tilemap - a little panel with all tiles in the session, that you can pick from when pasting tiles into the "Tile Tester". Otherwise you have to page through all tiles to find the one you want? Ouch! A tilemap you can use to select from when in "Override" would be giant.
7) When in "Override" mode allow CTRL+CLICKing on already pasted in tiles, in the "Tile Tester" to automatically select them for pasting, just like an eyedropper shortcut when drawing. This would be HUGE.
8 ) Nix the 4 1:1 tile previews in the top right and give each "Tile Editing" slot view options - 1x, 2x, max, etc. (conflicts with #9)
9) When I create a new session and choose to my tile dimension settings to be 8x8, why only four per page, still? Quantity of "Tile Editing" slots per page should depend on the total height. With an 8x8 tile, there's a ton of wasted space, vertically. (conflicts with #8)
10) And regardless of what tile size is used, there's also wasted space horizontally. That gray/green title bar and buttons doesn't need to be so huge-ishly huge-like. App window space is precious, you're using a fixed window size afterall.
11) Can you draw animation frames for tiles in the app or just preview it's animation?
12) Give EVERYTHING keyboard shortcuts.
13) If the "Tile Tester" only has two modes (default and override), two buttons is redundant, just use one toggle button. Simply UI!
14) "Tile Tester" "Override" mode brushes! Think of how much work is involved in filling the "Tile Tester" with an 8x8 grass tile so you can test your rock tiles within it here and there. Ever seen the Warcraft II map editor it had three sizes of brushes to quickly plop down tiles. I'm asking for pretty much the same thing.
15 ) Pop-ups (like the one that asks you if you want to quit when you hit the X and the animation ones, appear arbitrarily in the middle of my left monitor, even though the Tile Wizard is in my right mon. I suggest finding the app's center for the pop-up location.


sincerely,

Lord of Feature Creep and Destruction
« Last Edit: April 03, 2011, 04:55:00 am by Mathias »

Offline drakus2011

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Re: The Tile Wizard Software

Reply #17 on: April 03, 2011, 10:50:18 am
If you're seeing a site background color other than black something funky is going on with my newbie web code.  I haven't learned much about web development yet.

A friend and myself made that little Java applet game in two days, he did the programming and I did the graphics.  I haven't had much practice with graphics, nor have I had any proper training in the field but I plan to improve my artistic side pretty soon.

a )  Thanks for trying the game, it was fun to work on.  I know it could be a lot better but we didn't really plan to keep programming it, we just wanted to make a two day game project every once in a while to have a little collaboration session.
b )  I think the reason for being able to fly off the screen was for a quick pause type effect or something.
c )  I may not have the most recent version up on the website because I think my friend put in a reload option after you die.
e )  I was pushing for varied speeds and a boss alien at the end of the level but with the time constraint of two days we just have an endless level one.
g )  I think I've taken out some aliens when they were offscreen too.
h )  Yeah I think the point behind that was something like "If you get hit and can stay alive you should get some points".
i )  E,S,D,F instead of W, A, S, D because we were going to use those keys in our roleplaying games and that may be more natural when you're resting your hands on the keyboard.  Middle finger for the E key like when you're typing.  Pretty much the same setup as normal typing usage for your hands, no shifting your hands over for hitting the W key wih your middle finger.  I think it allows for more keys to be used with greater ease.
j )  The graphics could be better.  I probably will revamp the graphics at some point when I know what I'm doing with them.  The whole program may be enhanced at some point, possibly when the next flying game project comes up.
h )  The pig was super-overpowered where the bullets came flying out so fast it was a solid line,  until limitations on power-ups were added.  I think there were tons of aliens that came at you and it was really difficult so it was toned down.
k )  Bacon instead of corn?

We had a whole little story devised for the game.  The game over screen was going to be you on the dinner table being served to the aliens.





1)  I'm not sure on the two introduction screens, they may always be there, I'll need to do some more research on the Terms of Use subject.  The second introduction screen will probably stay in there so the user will know where it came from and where to look for updates.  I'll do some thinking on the subject and maybe shorten the content.  Originally the title of the application and the website was on the main screen that you work with.  The reason behind having the second introduction screen was in case the program was distributed by anyone other than me.

2a )  Now that the program is no longer a full-screen application I can add a default OS color picker dialog box.  While the application was fullscreen I had a heck of a time figuring out anything other than the basic R, G, B color bars.  Thats why the R, G, B color bars are the only thing in there.  I could allow for the control key + clicking on a palette slot will bring up the color picker and then the selected color in the dialog automatically sets the palette slot color.  I think I'll work on that as soon as I send this message.  That will also provide me with more screen space to work with on something else if I remove the current R, G, B color bars and color picker components.
2b )  I will definitely do the left click and right click colors.
2c )  I will have to think on how to seperate the left and right click's selected colors while keeping the numbers visible and allowing you to switch selected colors with the keyboard for the different clicks.
2d )  I could allow for clicking the R, G, and B's number value and bringing up an input dialog.  I can't use components like input fields directly in the program while drawing the contents using a backbuffer, I just can't figure that out and I've worked with it a lot.  If I keep the current R, G, B color bars I'll do some sort of input for them.  I'll check out what the default OS color picker dialog offers and come up with something.  Hmmm..  I'll research the topic of loading an image's indexed palette.  That would go well with a seperate palette for each tile, and also having a default shared palette.  I'm considering each tile having a unique palette.  Somebody suggested that and I think it would be a good addition.
2e )  Yes the color has to be in the color quickbar to draw with it.  Interesting I did not know that the current "palette" was actually a swatch storage or that the color quickbar would be called a palette.  I can hear art classes calling my name.  Thanks for clearifying that for me.

3 )  Yes currently if you want to select a new tile size you need to start the application anew.  I'll think about allowing the user to resize all tiles after startup.
4 )  I was thinking of adding a "First" and "Last" button next to the "Back" and "Next" buttons.  I'll work on that soon.
5 )  Instead of drawing on the tile you can click on the tile's identification number on the tile's menu to make that your active tile.  Maybe I should expand that to allow you to click on the gray menu bar.
6)  A tilemap would be helpful but it needs to wait until the performance of the program greatly improves by enhancement of the code.  I was working on a new window for a large tile tester, but sadly I could not get the program to perform very well most likely due to the way the program is coded.  So I had to stop working on that and release version 1.46.13.  The seperate tile tester window was taking a couple days of my time and I wasn't making any progress so I put that on hold.  Once I get the program performing excellently the tile tester window will be added and then a tile map!
7)  I'll think about control + clicking to eyedrop in the tile tester's override mode, that would be helpful especially in the large tile tester window.
8 )  The point of the seperate 1:1 tile views was so you could see what the tile looks like at its normal size while editing zoomed in.  I personally would miss the feature if I took it out.  Working with (9 I could allow you to change zoom levels on your tile up to a certain level depening on the tile size.  I'd have to consider taking the real tile display feature out after I allow zoom level changing and see how it works out.
9 )  The resaon behind there only being four tiles per page when the tile size is 32x32 or less is because thats how it used to be and I haven't found a way to condense the menu to work with small tiles.  I could perhaps use some sort of hover menu type component and do away with the static menus...  That would allow for more tiles per page depending on the size of tile.
10 )  I will test out my options for condensing the menu and trying out a menu that pops up when you perform some certain action with the keyboard and the mouse on a tile.
11 )  You can draw animation frames in the program and link them together into an animation sequence then place them in the tile tester's override mode and view them.
12 )  I'll do some thinking on shortcuts.
13 )  Yeah I could do what I did for the tile's grid button on the tile tester's menu or I'll just jump right in and do away with all static menus and hide them away.
14 )  Brushes could be worked in with the popup menu of the tile tester.  No I have not seen the Warcraft II map editor but speaking of Warcraft I just lost a mission in Warcraft III a few hours ago, my mind was busy thinking of The Tile Wizard.
15 )  I'll look into the popups coming at you on the wrong monitor.





Theres been a lot of good times working on this project, thanks Mathias for keeping me busy on it.  Also thank you for all of the great suggestions and feedback.