Good Tile/Pattern editor to use with Newcoleco's devkit?

[Darkhog]

ICVGM is nice and all, but it doesn't offer "quality of life" stuff like editing few chars at once bitmap-like (kinda like in CV Paint) that is useful when you either use metatiles (2x2 tile blocks) or want to put game's logo/logo animation as part of the set.

 

Another thing I don't like in particular is that zoom is too small sometimes and there's no zoom for nametable part of ICVGM. If there were ICVGM 3.30 sources available somewhere (I know it's VB6, but I think I'd manage), I could probably improve it myself, but for now it's really inconvenient to use.

 

Must export to C as I'm just no good with z80 asm.

[youki]

Did you ask directly newcoleco for source?

 

I would like also a more user friendly ICVGM ... each time i say i will do one myself... but i'm lazy , i prefer use the few time i have to create Games instead of tools in general .

[Kiwi]

I use Tilestudio to use the metatiling as a level editor, to build some of the rooms for Rockcutter, which someday will see a release.

 

 

The room's raw meta tilemap is,

const byte map47[] = {
27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,
27,27,27,27,27,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,27,27,27,
27,27,27,27,27,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,27,27,
27,27,27,27,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,27,

27,28,28,27,28,28,28,27,37,37,27,28,28,28,28,27,
28,28,28,27,28,28,28,27,27,27,27,28,29,28,28,28,
28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,27,29,28,28,28,28,
27,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,28,27,28,28,28,28,27,

27,29,28,27,37,37,27,28,28,28,27,29,29,27,27,27,
27,37,37,27,27,27,27,28,28,28,28,28,28,27,27,27,
27,38,38,27,27,27,27,37,27,28,28,28,27,27,27,27,
27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,27,
};

void WriteScreen() {
y=0;c=0;x=0;
for(i=0;i!=192;i++){
c=Data[i];
if(c==0){put_frame(SkyDkBlu,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==1){put_frame(SkyTrans,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==2){put_frame(SkyLtBlue,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==3){put_frame(GrassTopSolid,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==4){put_frame(GroundSolid,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==5){put_frame(GroundBG,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==6){put_frame(CaveWallSolid,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==7){put_frame(CaveWallSolidL,x,y,2,2);}
if(c=={put_frame(CaveWallBG,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==9){put_frame(GrassTopBG,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==10){put_frame(WaterTop,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==11){put_frame(CaveCeiling,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==12){put_frame(CaveSpike,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==13){put_frame(RockPile,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==14){put_frame(RockPile2,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==15){put_frame(LedgeGrass,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==16){put_frame(TreeTop,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==17){put_frame(TreeTrunk,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==18){put_frame(Grassy,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==19){put_frame(Flower,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==20){put_frame(CloudLeft,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==21){put_frame(CloudRight,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==22){put_frame(GoRightSign,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==23){put_frame(RockLedge,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==24){put_frame(Water,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==25){put_frame(Curtain,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==26){put_frame(Waterfall,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==27){put_frame(Cave2Wall,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==28){put_frame(Cave2BG,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==29){put_frame(Cave2Ledge,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==30){put_frame(Cave2Wallhalf,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==31){put_frame(CoralPlant,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==32){put_frame(Cave2Ledge2,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==33){put_frame(Cave2Beam,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==34){put_frame(Cave2Beam2,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==35){put_frame(SandyTop,x,y,2,2);}
if(c==36){put_frame(SandyWall,x,y,2,2);}
x+=2;
if(x>=32){x=0;y+=2;}
}
}

This is the old method I used to write the metatiles on screen. The data itself been compressed into pletter format and to be decompressed to and pull from the VRAM unused by the video processor. In this way, I can cram like 59 screen on one 32KB cartridge. Keep in mind to disable the nmi during this process or add delay(1) to if(x>=32){x=0;y+=2;delay(1);} So the music and sound effect won't freeze. And the VRAM won't be corrupt.

 

I did use Window's magnifying accessibly feature to use as zoom into the name table. In window 7, you can find it under accessories > ease of access > Magnifying

 

I use Paint Shop Pro 4 to help me make tiles bigger than 8x8. After I do that, then I draw the tiles in order, from top to bottom.

 

[Darkhog]

Did you ask directly newcoleco for source?

 

I would like also a more user friendly ICVGM ... each time i say i will do one myself... but i'm lazy , i prefer use the few time i have to create Games instead of tools in general .

I've figured that if he wanted it to be available, he'd either put it in the kit or as a separate download. So either he doesn't want to do so (I wouldn't be surprised given it's VB6 and code is probably very messy unless he's BASIC God - i.e. a person who can write very readable and concise BASIC code, just as good as regular code in other languages - met few of those) or he lost it.

 

I could try writing a new one, but I already have a programming indie game project on my head and would need to also rewrite what's already in ICVGM, some of which I have no idea how if I were to start from scratch.

 

@Kiwi: not relevant. I'm looking for something that would export charsets and nametables directly for use with newcoleco's devkit. Basically like ICVGM, but with few quality of life improvements such as selecting rectangular area of charset (say, 3x5 chars) and editing it like it's a continuous bitmap (any color clashes would be resolved like in CVPaint and then possibility to finetune on a per-character basis). Not necessarily for use for metatiles.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Darkhog

[nitrofurano]

i’m more comfortable on Tiled ( http://www.mapeditor.org/ )

("sudo apt install tiled" on terminal is enough for installing it on Ubuntu or Debian)

[Tony Cruise]

The Tile Editor part of my Sprite & Tile Editor is still a work in progress, but it might meet some of your requirements. NB: It is Windows only, it is written in .Net however, so may work using the Mono libraries and/or Wine, but I haven't tested it.

http://www.electricadventures.net/ViewArticle.aspx?Id=128

[Tursi]

Magellan is becoming a pretty nice tool and sees updates pretty much on request - check this thread:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/161356-magellan/?p=3641384

 

Updates tend to be posted inline rather than at the top, so this is the current build.