editor for playfield spaces of arbitrary size

[bogax]

For my own purposes I'm creating an editor
(in javascript) for sort of arbitrary playfield
spaces. (for one thing I want to play with
scrollng routines)

I'm just wondering if anyone else has an
interest in such a thing or thoughts on
what it should do.

What it will do is allow editing of spaces
in more or less arbitray widths (in bytes)
and heights and then produce bB data statements.
(no doubt that will be refined as I get a better
idea of what I want or need)

As I said it's for my own purposes but
eg I don't care about decimal but if some loon
thougt they would use it but wanted
data statements in decimal I wouldn't be averse
to adding that.

(no I'm not picking on theloon that's just a recent
example)

[iesposta]

Interested!

Add anything you come up with to: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/216314-playfield-procedural-drawing-compression/

[+Gemintronic]

PLEASE PICK ON ME!!! The bane of my existence has been scrolling routines even as a teen. One of my "must do" projects is to back port Super Pitfall to the 2600. The more code with scrolling routines the more chances I get to understand them

[+Gemintronic]

Oops! I was so excite that I completely forgot my suggestion: Instead of a new editor why not just use Mappy and make a lua export script for bB DATA statements

http://www.tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php

[iesposta]

Oh, and please make a preview window with 4X long pixels so it looks like what will be displayed.

The one in Visual batari Basic is ridiculous being so short and tall! (Unless I am missing something to change the preview display?)

[+Random Terrain]

Oh, and please make a preview window with 4X long pixels so it looks like what will be displayed.

The one in Visual batari Basic is ridiculous being so short and tall! (Unless I am missing something to change the preview display?)

 

Seems to look the way it should to me:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-vbb.html#playfielded

[bogax]

Oh, and please make a preview window with 4X long pixels so it looks like what will be displayed.

The one in Visual batari Basic is ridiculous being so short and tall! (Unless I am missing something to change the preview display?)

I expected to make that a setting with a default to standard kernel proportions

[Byte Knight]

This would be awesome! I'm thinking of making a game that would have several levels with high-resolution playfields. It would be nice if the editor had playfield colors and could create the pfcolors code for you too.

 

Speaking of pfcolors, I've been wondering if there is a way to compress pfcolors statements. These can take up a lot of graphics bank memory (88 bytes per screen at the highest resolution I believe), especially if the game has multiple screens of different colors. Is there a way to compress the pfcolors statement too? For example, if there is the same color in several consecutive rows.

[Byte Knight]

For my own purposes I'm creating an editor

(in javascript) for sort of arbitrary playfield

spaces. (for one thing I want to play with

scrollng routines)

 

Any progress with this project?

[+Gemintronic]

I've queried batari on making/cleaning up another 4 way scrolling example but I have a feeling he's way too busy with other projects.

 

Since 4 way scrolling is something I need for an upcoming RPG writing a map editor and sharing it wouldn't be any trouble for me to do.

[bogax]

 

Any progress with this project?

 

I've been too busy recently to play around much.

I haven't quite ground to a halt, but I haven't

progressed much either.

[+Gemintronic]

 

I've been too busy recently to play around much.

I haven't quite ground to a halt, but I haven't

progressed much either.

 

You've probably seen my progress in at least getting vertical scrolling working from DATA statements. It could use your touch (and sanity) when things get less busy for you I'm almost certain horizontal scrolling could be added to it.

[bogax]

This is very preliminary.
I've been doing this in Opera.
If someone wants to try it and
report how it works for them
(and in what browser) I'd be interested

arbitrary_playfield_05.html

Columns are in bytes not playfield pixels.
For the moment it's limited to 32 columns (bytes) by 32 rows.
Minimum is 4 columns x 11 rows.
And the data table is in rows of 16 hex bytes.
If you change the size of world the (columns or rows).
you lose whatever you've done and start over.

[bogax]

Oops! I was so excite that I completely forgot my suggestion: Instead of a new editor why not just use Mappy and make a lua export script for bB DATA statements

http://www.tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php

 

Along those lines, I don't think it would be too difficult to use javascript

to convert a picture into bB data.

 

Given javascript's limitations you'd have to go through some gyrations

but you could use anything to edit your picture.

 

The gyrations would be saving your picture as .png or .gif (I don't think

you'ld want to use jpeg's) with some particular name that the javascript

was written to look for

 

This would have the disadvantage of not having pixels of the proper

proportions while editing the picture in your favorite graphics editor.

 

But then I haven't figured out a simple way to get all the proportions you

might want using tables in javascript

 

Conversion would basically be done using an HTML canvas in javascript

[+Gemintronic]

Your byte reversing code has been ENORMOUSLY helpful in map editing. Now I don't have to worry about such things when modifying the DATA statements that contain the playfield. I really appreciate your help, man!

[pacgreg]

If you do what iesposta said and make a more functional playfield editor, I'd love to see something that lets you see different df#fracinc values, and maybe an easier/faster way to edit the colors of each row. Now that I think of it a sprite editor like this would also be amazing, but that might be greedy

[+Gemintronic]

If you do what iesposta said and make a more functional playfield editor, I'd love to see something that lets you see different df#fracinc values, and maybe an easier/faster way to edit the colors of each row. Now that I think of it a sprite editor like this would also be amazing, but that might be greedy

 

Wouldn't that be something for VisualbB?

[bogax]

If you do what iesposta said and make a more functional playfield editor, I'd love to see something that lets you see different df#fracinc values, and maybe an easier/faster way to edit the colors of each row. Now that I think of it a sprite editor like this would also be amazing, but that might be greedy

 

I'm not really familiar with DPC+

 

What are the different df#fracinc values?

 

I don't think it'd be very hard to adapt to sprite editing

but I've never done anything but the simplest sprites

so I'll have to figure it out.