Monday, December 12, 2011

wanted features

There are things I would like to improve in each of my tools. Maybe it's a good time to collect them in one place. Various features I'd like to add to LEDS depend on the ability to display the map at once. I planned a radar widget in a corner of the TilesetWindow, but that's only 64 pixels wide. If I want 1 pixel per tile, that's only 2 screens wide.

To do better, I'll need to fit at least 8x8 tiles per pixel, thus I'll need direct-color rendering to vary the "gray" level to the number of "solid" tiles in an area.

I've already some code that creates a direct-color sprite (SpriteEditor, PaletteWindow, GrayPreview), but I remember I had a hard time making it work. Reading gbatek again wouldn't hurt.


On the other hand, it would be good if I could have a "stencil" feature (as in Deluxe Paint IIe) in SEDS. I realised when packing the new version for Atnas that I had a serious bug with my previous attempt to have it running. The 'quickpal' widget could be used more appropriatedly to build that idea.

Last thing, I'd need some alternate zoom level for the animation editor. Bilou, dumblador, ... they aren't the size of that Mr. Egg. I did a try a few weeks ago, but at some point, the code that enforce that position is at a specific pixel (not a fraction) despite the zoom level wasn't planned to work at other levels. More thouhgts needed.

edit: Oh, well, and of course, there's the revised collision engine, still pending in its branch. Maybe *that* should be the immediate focus ...

edit+: My milestone for the next release of LEDS should be to ensure that it's fun for a middle-aged kid to draw his own level. That may require the ability to "freely draw" an object for which no pixel art exist yet, and to allow that object to be imported in SEDS later.

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