17 replies to this topic

[snicklin]

I am looking for a tool which will do the following:

1) Will either import or help me create a font (in graphics mode 12 / antic 4).
2) Will then allow me to build individual tiles (4x4 in my case).
3) And then I want to use those tiles to create 10 x 5 maps of multiple screens.
4) Finally I need to be able to export the tile data, the map data and the font data separately in a raw format.

Envision seems to be able to do this from what I can tell, however it is fiddly.

Are there any other alternatives?

I'd like something which is Atari specific (i.e. I can visualise graphics mode 12 screens) if possible.

And it needs to be PC based.

[Heaven/TQA]

Char Päd. 1.0 Windows Tool

[MrFish]

I think CharPad, of C64 fame can pull it off. I've never actually used it myself though. I use the Atari based Macro Edit or Graph2Font.

[MrFish]

Heaven/TQA, on Sat Jul 21, 2012 1:54 PM, said:

Char Päd. 1.0 Windows Tool

Haha, beat me to it.

[snicklin]

I've tried Char Pad and it seems almost to be what I want but you can't seem to rearrange the characters in a tile, you appear to have to have those already designed. I am avoiding Atari based tools due to having to import/export files. g2f doesn't seem to handle tiles as I'd like. Char Pad is so close to being what I want it to be... am I being too picky?

[snicklin]

Actually, I take that back. Charpad should do what I want. It seems good if you create something from scratch in Charpad but not so good if you have existing characters without tiles.

Thanks for the help all!

[Philsan]

Steve, any news about your promising racing game?

[Heaven/TQA]

but CharPad does allow to load fonts? so you don't need to start from scratch? simply load CHR files (which are fonts) but make sure that you select 128 chars per font otherwise it will not load Atari fonta (128x8=1024 while 256x8=2048 c64 fonts have).

for multicolor fonts simply switch to multicolor in the font panel settings?

[snicklin]

Philsan, on Sun Jul 22, 2012 2:47 AM, said:

Steve, any news about your promising racing game?

Aagh, I knew that somebody would ask at some stage, I've been putting this off for a while.

I've brought it to a halt at least for the moment. I think that I was trying to ask a little too much of the A8 when doing a game like that in CC65. I'd got the mechanics of the car moving round working OK and then I was using up all the processor time on NTSC machines. Therefore I realised that there wasn't much processing time left in PAL. Then to think that I needed to add another car (at least) and then have it following some kind of route around the track, and also I had to work out if the player's car had really completed all sections of the track and not cheated. I then thought, "I don't think I'll have enough processor time left". There were a lot of 16 bit calculations due to the screen being two screens in width (and height) which were slow in CC65.

So what I've done is brought a halt to the racing game. Then I wanted to learn to develop in 6502 with a simplistic game. Then I wanted to have another go at developing it, using my new 6502 skills. Though I could see that being quite a way away. If you're interesting in some undocumented CC65 source code, I'd be willing to hand it over (though it's in a non-working state at the moment).

[snicklin]

Heaven/TQA, on Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:28 AM, said:

but CharPad does allow to load fonts? so you don't need to start from scratch? simply load CHR files (which are fonts) but make sure that you select 128 chars per font otherwise it will not load Atari fonta (128x8=1024 while 256x8=2048 c64 fonts have).

for multicolor fonts simply switch to multicolor in the font panel settings?

I could load the fonts no problem. The problem is that I want to use those characters to then build a tile. But to build a tile, it wants me to draw the tile (pixel by pixel). Or have I misunderstood? (I hope that I have!)

Edited by snicklin, Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:33 AM.

[snicklin]

I'm using version 1.83 by the way, it also seems a little buggy.

[Philsan]

snicklin, on Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:31 AM, said:

Philsan, on Sun Jul 22, 2012 2:47 AM, said:

Steve, any news about your promising racing game?

Aagh, I knew that somebody would ask at some stage, I've been putting this off for a while.

I don't have a strong memory but I remember interesting things...

BTW, I have to ask the same question to someone regarding a promising RPG...

I don't think I could use your source code in TBXL!
I hope it could be useful for someone else.

[TMR]

snicklin, on Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:40 AM, said:

I'm using version 1.83 by the way, it also seems a little buggy.

Char Pad from 1.7 onwards is built around the idea of painting straight to tiles and the program optimising them into a character set - version 1.0 can't do some of the cool things like change tile sizes (it's always 4x4 characters) or set up collision maps that were added to 1.7 during that upgrade but it's based on the more traditional approach of building characters and then constructing tiles, that's the one to look at.

i've been using Char Pad 1.0 for A8 stuff for a while now and both Callisto and Energy Arc are built with it; for editing five colour character-based stuff, i set the font to 128 colours, flag which character codes need the upper bit set with colour-per-character attribute mode and run the saved CTM file through a quick and dirty hack of my own Char Pad data manipulator; right now it's got a known bug, but if y'self or anyone wants a copy to get started until i fix it just PM me. =-)

[snicklin]

TMR & Heaven/TQA,

Thank you both. I should have used version 1.0 from the start as mentioned. I'd seen a latter version on the net and presumed that this would be less buggy and have the same features and more. Thats what you get for presuming.

I've been fiddling around with version 1.0 for a short while now. It appears to do what I want but I haven't looked at the exported data yet.

As for your data manipulator, PM on the way TMR.

[TMR]

Shoddy, buggy and badly documented data tool sent. =-)

[Heaven/TQA]

ah... I was not aware of the new version which works differently... good that I am still using the old version of Char Pad

[TMR]

Heaven/TQA, on Sun Jul 22, 2012 11:10 AM, said:

ah... I was not aware of the new version which works differently... good that I am still using the old version of Char Pad

T'be honest, i've half considered doing my own tool now that Char Pad is being taken in a different direction... but as always, it's a matter of finding the free time to code it. =-(

[snicklin]

Cheers Jase, I've got your data manipulator running. At the moment I've not got a reason to use it as I've managed to code around needing it, which speeds up my turnaround time between builds. I may well come back to it though...