Tileset editor

[Spyro_Drag]

i've been working on my own tileset for weeks now, and i started thinking, wouldnt it be awsome if someone made, or had, an editor that was just for tilesets? something that makes the other needed files to go with a set, like the ".radar" and ".ttp".

any ideas or hints?

[NoQ]

I don't see how much automatization and time economy can it actually bring compared to manual file editing (auto-fill arizona_enum.txt? not much ... otherwise there's no duplicate information in tileset definition, nothing to automate ... uhm, maybe multi-resolution decal files as well ...)

If you are looking for automated transition tile generation (for a 2.3-style tileset), you can have a look at the imagemagick script posted here.

[Spyro_Drag]

im not sure, but my tileset isnt quite like the others. theres more to it, and its in a different order than the originals as well. also im talkin 3.0+. im thinking along the lines of "Tile-00 = Cliff (none buildable, none-traversable) + Radar limiting (##). Tile-01.... and so on.

Idea.PNG

it would comple the set and make the needed ".radar" and ".ttp" ass well as the requierd 16, 32, 64, and 128 sized files. down sizing from 128 of coarse. all of my tiles started as 128, so the program would simply re-size it into the other smaller sizes.

i suppose it might be a bit difficult, but i has to be posible, right?

[aubergine]

I bet Duha could create something using Node.js and then it would be portable to all operating systems as well.

[Spyro_Drag]

i.. erm... actually made that image in paint. <.< but if anyone can do it, i would seriously be thankfull.

but in any case, im sure many people would/could, and will use it for there own creations. just think of the posibilities if every one could make there own tile sets that easily. i mean, i know NoQ and a few others make there own anyways, but this could benefit them as well. dont you think?

[Rman Virgil]

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Back in the pre-lib days we had a prog that greatly facilitated making custom tile set maps. There were many, many more, custom tile sets than exist today (some really radical but cool ones too) and custom tile set maps were common. There was also prog that pre-empted any possible compatibility issues.

Same with complex mods. Had an outstanding prog that made them a piece of cake to create and test iterations. The number of outstanding mods was a treasure chest as a result. Ditto the compatibility prog.

These were all priorities made reality. It doesn't really happen otherwise.

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[Spyro_Drag]

@Rman: where can i get one, and is it, at all, compatible with 3.0+?

my tile set will actually be just over 100 strong, and is suposed to look something like a mars-esk landscape with massive computer boards installed (dont ask, thought it was cool at the time) with red lands, red water and redish snow, as well as black top, and metal surfaces. so i could SERIOUSLY use this program to finish everything else, otherwise, ive stalled and cant get the engin to turn over, if you get wut i mean.

[Rman Virgil]

@Rman: where can i get one, and is it, at all, compatible with 3.0+?

my tile set will actually be just over 100 strong, and is suposed to look something like a mars-esk landscape with massive computer boards installed (dont ask, thought it was cool at the time) with red lands, red water and redish snow, as well as black top, and metal surfaces. so i could SERIOUSLY use this program to finish everything else, otherwise, ive stalled and cant get the engin to turn over, if you get wut i mean.

Sorry Spyro, it's not compatible with the current binary / data set or FlaME or 32 EW. Wish it was. Such a tool would need to be built from scratch again.

Only reason I brought it up is to bare witness to the fact that such tools made a HUGE difference for many years in the quantity of high quality work that was done to extend and enhance the WZ gameplay expeience; the games popularity, its longevity and even its ultimate liberation.

Your set sounds very promising. Know of a WZ Mars campaign that was stalled for lack of a proper tile set. Is there a possibilty you could post some sample still shots of your tiles ? Visual examples can be inspirng, if you know what I mean.

Also - have you been able to do any in-game testing to see exactly how any of your tiles are blended by the way the new terrain renderer works ? Have you gotten into making any decals, like for cliff face ? If you have tested some, have you been able to see how your water texture is animated ?

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[NoQ]

this could benefit them as well. dont you think?

Well, that was the whole point of my post: i'm completely satisfied with ImageMagick+Bash scripting, that allows me to, for example, re-generate 16px/32px/64px decals from 128px decals in one completely intuitive line of code:

Code: Select all

for i in 16 32 64; do for j in {00..89}; do convert -resize $i tertilesc128hw/tile-$j.png tertilesc${i}hw/tile-$j.png; done; done

So i just have a terminal open and recall this command whenever i need to re-generate the tileset. I have no idea why spend a week to make a program that will do the same thing with 1000 lines of code, when i only need 1. That is, i see it may be good, just can't make myself do it, not having enough motivation.

It could be great to have such program inside a map editor, so that you can apply your tileset to a map and instantly see the effect of your changes. But, unfortunately, we don't have a map editor that supports showing the game's terrain as it is right now.

[Spyro_Drag]

the only problem with that line is, it doesnt make any ".radar" or ".ttp" for the set. although, im sure the prog would use something like that to re-gen the tiles.

and i think it would be a good idea to add it to a map editor as well, but if im remembering right, flail has been gone a while, plus hes got so many other things to work on. and i dont know who made EW, but i doubt they could work on it either.

on a side note... i miss flail...

i supose this is wut you would call, a "pipe dream". oh well, just wishfull thinking i guess.

[Rman Virgil]

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I understand what you are after.

I used the mip-map script once on a custom tertile set for v. 2.3.x a few years ago. It was a simple process. You would at least get to see how your tertiles looked in game. Would not that alone be of some value to know were you are at with the art side of what you have created ?

BTW, I've heard the expression "pipe dream" but I must confess "pot dream" is new to me. On reflection, I imagine they amount to the same thing.

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[NoQ]

.radar: it's one more line of code which can produce radar colors as average colors of tiles or textures (resize image to 1x1 and output in text mode, then loop through tiles). But that's a bad idea, cause radar shouldn't really look realistically, but rather schematically; we need to keep seeing units on top of terrain. So i suggest not to make new radar files at all, but rather use existing ones; they're cleanly looking and also completely unrelated to the real terrain we have.

.ttp: this surely can't be automated (that's your design a machine will never guess), but we already have an editor for them, built into FlaME. As for creating new tile type files (note that only amount of tiles actually matters), you can pretty much do something like head -n $n /dev/zero to populate it, after echoing an appropriate header. This is a rare operation and again boils down to one-liner, not much desire to automate it either.

[Spyro_Drag]

ahhh, i wanted to make a christmasy ".radar"

oh well, it dont matter that much, but the other problem with that is, myn has more than wuts in the ".radar" of the originals. the other thing is.... i think i need to take computer lesons cause i gots no ideas how to do that one liner...

welp, just means more learning for me. and back to the drawing boards to reduce my tileset a bit to fit the ".radar" file ive got. thanks for the info NoQ, it does help.

[Rman Virgil]

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Interesting. I'll take the answer to all 5 questions as a "No".

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