What are people using these days for tile/map building? I'd prefer something Windows based, as having to work within an emulator tends to make life a bit more convoluted (but not impossible). Supporting Plus palettes would be a nice to have too as it would reduce round-tripping to get the look right. Not too worried about the output formats, as I can always remap the data to match the way my scroller requires it.
Or should I just crack out Visual Studio and knock something up for myself?
Hi Andy,
You could Try tiles studio (http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/). Fast and Easy to use !!!
It was planned to add this function in iMPdraw.... (noted on my todo list)
Cheers, I'll give that a look!
I use tiled: http://www.mapeditor.org/
It can export to JSON, so a little bit of python to process it into your structures to use from C or ASM and you're done.
There are also libraries for several programming languages and gamedev toolkits that allow reading tiled's binary format, if you prefer that.
EDIT: forgot to mention that it multi-platform, I use it on Linux but there's Windows version.
There is RGAS also http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Retro_Game_Asset_Studio#Retro_Game_Asset_Studio (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Retro_Game_Asset_Studio#Retro_Game_Asset_Studio)
I tend to build something myself (with C++ and allegro) although it does tend to be a little unfriendly but as its for my use only its not of much concern.
I've had a look at the suggestions, but most of them lack an easy way to work with compound tiles (a 8*16 tile made from 4*8 smaller tiles). You could work round it, but it's a bit clunky. A smattering of WPF and I've got some very rough tools for working directly in the formats I need. Will keep some of the others in mind for future though.
Quote from: andycadley on 10:43, 23 December 16
I've had a look at the suggestions, but most of them lack an easy way to work with compound tiles (a 8*16 tile made from 4*8 smaller tiles). You could work round it, but it's a bit clunky. A smattering of WPF and I've got some very rough tools for working directly in the formats I need. Will keep some of the others in mind for future though.
Tiled (http://www.mapeditor.org/) lets you work with compound tiles of any size, add properties, different layers, custom objects... Then you only have to convert from JSON/XML to your own format and it's done. I've seen it being used in many different projects and it's easy, fast and useful.
Maybe is not exactly what you are looking for, but I think you should give it a complete try, not just a fast one.
I must be missing something then. I can see how you can paint with multiple tiles in one go (for quickly drawing larger objects etc.) but then you get multiple entries in the map, which isn't what I want (I could post-process it, but then I'm doing 90% of what a custom tool does for me anyway!). I even had a dig around in the file format documentation and can't see how you'd specify that kind of indirection in it.
I shall keep a copy around, it might be useful in the future (though it could do with being a lot less crashy) but I don't think it can easily be persuaded to fit into my current engine. Another advantage of a custom tool is I can paint in Mode 0 without having to fiddle around inside an emulator or be more careful about pixel sizes.
Hi,With Pro Motion NG you can do all these things, can draw directly in tileset and modify all the tiles at the same time, can take a big portion of diferent tiles and cut/paste, and you can draw with mode 0 pixel and more things.
The free version have all these features.
Interesting, that looks a lot more like my kind of paint program. :) I still can't see any way to have map tiles that are larger than the actual individual graphic tiles, the two seem inextricably linked, but it's a way more complex app so maybe I'll have to come back and look at it again in future.
Last few bugs squashed, some test graphics and map doodled and I've got lovely 50fps full screen scrolling looking lovely.
:)