Not tile based generic map editor.

Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 25 Nov 2012, 15:28

Hello everybody,

out of curiosity: Is there such a software?
BTW: I'm not sure this topic belongs here, but there seems to be no category like "Tools & Development Facilities".
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Julius » 25 Nov 2012, 17:37

What kind of editor do you mean then? Are we talking about 2D or 3D maps? For 2D... could you explain how a non tile based editor should work, as opposed to lets say GIMP?

However this should probably be moved to the artists section.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 25 Nov 2012, 18:32

It is meant mostly for 2D maps.
It could work similar to Tiled (http://www.mapeditor.org/) but without the tile part.
You would have a map with a specific size (in pixels, not tiles) in which one could insert back- and foreground images (with settings like "repeated" or "auto-movement" for x or y) and layers.
Layers include objects like blocks, text, particle effects, starting points etc. These are defined by giving them an unique name, width and height and assigning them an image.
One could simply place instances of those objects in the selected layer. There should be an improved version of the "insert next to" function of the Secret Maryo Chronicles Level Editor.
And of course one should be able to save and load these maps as XML, JSON or WhateverTM.

It's not like i need such an editor at the moment, but i have been playing around with Swing lately and am thinking about starting programming such an editor for practise. So i want to know, because i don't feel like reinventing the wheel. I found already a .Net-based editor, but that is of course Windows only.

qubodup (i believe) once said, that level editors should be included in the game. I think he is right in general, but except Frogatto most 2D-games i know about have level editors which are somewhat clumsy or downright awful to use.
Partial issues are:
* no or too hidden help
* strange key shortcuts
* not enough powerful features
* no mouse support (the keyboard isn't really good for selecting objects with a selection rectangle or positioning stuff)

To push this to extremes that could mean for such an editor:
* rotating support
* more like an IDE with the ability to manage whole projects
* managing and creating image to id mappings
* plugin support for custom import and export formats
* plugin support for scripting facilities like a graphical DSL or a source code editor with lua support
* the shiny green play button to start the level in the test mode of a game executive like game -t "path/to/level.xml"

(Not that I'm insane enough to plan these, but that's my ideal for such an editor)

EDIT: Since this post may not answer you question properly: the basic idea is an editor where you can place objects where you want, not bound to tiles.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 26 Nov 2012, 16:12

I dream of such a cool editor!

I played with the Tiled qt version: it has an "object" layer where you can freely place tile or shape, but it not complete.

Here is the features I'd like to have:

- place, scale or rotate shape and assign materials and properties to object freely.
- shapes: square, rectangle, triangle, circle, ellipse, convex polygon
- material: color and/or texture.
- zoom, pan, rotate view.
- an object has zero or more shape.
- an object has zero or more properties (key/value string).
- object cloning, palette
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 26 Nov 2012, 18:19

Hi devnewton.
What do you mean by materials?
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 26 Nov 2012, 21:57

Color, texture, shaders...
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 26 Nov 2012, 22:12

Hm. Good idea, but i think this will make it more difficult, because at least the second and the third will probably require hardware accelaratioen.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby bjorn » 26 Nov 2012, 23:44

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Tiled.

This thread got my attention since Sauer2 was asking on the #tiled IRC channel about doing such an editor and why I had decided to rewrite Tiled in Qt vs. Java (a question to which the answer is at http://www.mapeditor.org/2009/09/qt-ver ... eased.html, btw).

Extending the functionality of the Object Layer in Tiled has been planned for a long time already. Personally I don't think there is any reason to do another editor from scratch just to have stuff like object templates, object rotation and scaling or even "IDE"-like project support. They are all features you could add to Tiled, and in that case the result would be an editor that combines the best of both worlds.

So far each version of Tiled has worked a little bit towards being more than just a tile map editor:

Tiled Qt 0.6.0:
* Added support for placing tiles as objects
* Added an object selection tool, allowing moving/deleting multiple objects
* Added "Move To Layer" submenu to the context menu of objects

Tiled Qt 0.7.0:
* Added copy/paste support for objects
* Made the object context menu available in all object tools

Tiled Qt 0.8.0:
* Added support for polygon and polyline objects
* Added support for defining the color of custom object types

Tiled Qt 0.9.0 (coming soon):
* Added objects dock and per-object visibility toggle (by Tim Baker)
* Added basic image layer support (by Gregory Nickonov and Alexander Kuhrt)
* Added support for ellipse objects (by devnewton and Christoph Schnackenberg)

Why not help continue this trend?
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 27 Nov 2012, 13:37

Well if there is plan to replace https://github.com/bjorn/tiled/pull/235 why not.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby bjorn » 27 Nov 2012, 16:26

The pull request https://github.com/bjorn/tiled/pull/261 to which I referred there was already merged, which enables tilesets to consist of individual images of different sizes. There is no UI for this yet though, which is sometimes most of the work.

This makes "tilesets" basically just groups of textures, which objects can refer to. Maybe the 'tile object' should be merged into the 'rectangle object', like what you did in your pull request, but then relying on the Tile pointer rather than adding an image file member (which should also remove the need for the pixmap cache).
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 27 Nov 2012, 18:25

Yes, "tile pointer" should do the job.

Another thing: for my game, the ability to rotate objects and having a rotated view would be very nice, because level are rotatable. Do you think it's easy or hard to implement?
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 27 Nov 2012, 18:40

bjorn {l Wrote}:Disclaimer: I'm the author of Tiled.

This thread got my attention since Sauer2 was asking on the #tiled IRC channel about doing such an editor and why I had decided to rewrite Tiled in Qt vs. Java (a question to which the answer is at http://www.mapeditor.org/2009/09/qt-ver ... eased.html, btw).

Extending the functionality of the Object Layer in Tiled has been planned for a long time already. Personally I don't think there is any reason to do another editor from scratch just to have stuff like object templates, object rotation and scaling or even "IDE"-like project support. They are all features you could add to Tiled, and in that case the result would be an editor that combines the best of both worlds.

So far each version of Tiled has worked a little bit towards being more than just a tile map editor:

Tiled Qt 0.6.0:
* Added support for placing tiles as objects
* Added an object selection tool, allowing moving/deleting multiple objects
* Added "Move To Layer" submenu to the context menu of objects

Tiled Qt 0.7.0:
* Added copy/paste support for objects
* Made the object context menu available in all object tools

Tiled Qt 0.8.0:
* Added support for polygon and polyline objects
* Added support for defining the color of custom object types

Tiled Qt 0.9.0 (coming soon):
* Added objects dock and per-object visibility toggle (by Tim Baker)
* Added basic image layer support (by Gregory Nickonov and Alexander Kuhrt)
* Added support for ellipse objects (by devnewton and Christoph Schnackenberg)

Why not help continue this trend?

Well, you got me. I'll take a look at the source code and check if i can help with that.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 27 Nov 2012, 18:46

devnewton {l Wrote}:Yes, "tile pointer" should do the job.

Another thing: for my game, the ability to rotate objects and having a rotated view would be very nice, because level are rotatable. Do you think it's easy or hard to implement?

QGraphicsView (which was mentioned in the blogpost) supports rotation, so it is not impossible, i guess.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 27 Nov 2012, 19:03

BTW: The commit comments mention Qt 5 beta. Do i need a special version of the Qt SDK or Qt Creator to compile this successfully?

EDIT: Solved by the Qt website.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 27 Nov 2012, 22:18

I've downloaded the Qt-SDK (with Qt-Creator 2.6) and cloned the git repository to my hard drive.
As i tried to compile the project, a problem with missing references to zlib symbols like _deflate or _inflate appears. (in libtiled -> compression.obj)
The Tiled wiki says, zlib headers are delivered with the project.
Does someone know what to do here?


Operating system is Windows 7 64-bit. I hope that doesn't cause the trouble.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby bjorn » 27 Nov 2012, 23:05

Are you trying to compile against Qt 5 beta (that might explain your zlib issue)? Please try with Qt 4.8.2 (not 4.8.3 since it has another issue which prevents compiling).

Otherwise try asking on the IRC channel for help (but stick around, I read your message today one hour later but you had already left after 15 min. :-)).

Btw yes, I think rotating the whole view should be possible. Works similar to the way the whole view is scaled for zooming, it's just another transformation.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 27 Nov 2012, 23:55

bjorn {l Wrote}:Are you trying to compile against Qt 5 beta (that might explain your zlib issue)? Please try with Qt 4.8.2 (not 4.8.3 since it has another issue which prevents compiling).

I guess that explains the issue. I'll try 4.8.2, probably tomorrow.

bjorn {l Wrote}:Otherwise try asking on the IRC channel for help (but stick around, I read your message today one hour later but you had already left after 15 min. :-)).

Well, you now, the problem was, I was trying to wait for an answer using the web chat window and play UrbanTerror at the same time and that didn't work. Also i wasn't sure if you really were near you PC.
So: Thank you very much for helping me here! :)
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 28 Nov 2012, 13:00

For asynchronous conversation IRC is not handy. I suggest the use of tribune chat system ( http://drupal.org/project/tribune demo at http://tout.essaye.sauf.ca/ ) which keep history for long time even if you're not connected.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 28 Nov 2012, 18:13

Where should i download Qt SDK 4.8.2?
On the Qt-Projekt are only links for 5.0.0, 4.8.3 and 4.6.x. the ftp archive contains only much older versions which mostly are source code anyway.
The Tiled wiki points at the old nokia website, btw.
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby bjorn » 28 Nov 2012, 23:14

You can find 4.8.2 here:

http://releases.qt-project.org/qt4/source/

You're right the Tiled wiki is in need of an update after the whole Nokia -> Digia transition. I'll get on that tomorrow!

Edit: I'm not primarily a Windows user, btw... it's so much easier to install Qt ad Qt Creator on Linux. :/
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 28 Nov 2012, 23:41

bjorn {l Wrote}:You can find 4.8.2 here:

http://releases.qt-project.org/qt4/source/

Thanks!

bjorn {l Wrote}:Edit: I'm not primarily a Windows user, btw... it's so much easier to install Qt ad Qt Creator on Linux. :/

I'm not using Windows by choice. Seriously missing aptitude. :(
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 29 Nov 2012, 12:23

I just noticed that I use one of your creation in my game: http://opengameart.org/content/starfield-background
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby Sauer2 » 29 Nov 2012, 19:51

Cool, is it a space shooter?

EDIT: I compiled Tiled successfully. The background/foreground image layer is awesome, just what i had in mind!
Some things i mentioned:
* Image layers are not rendered correctly in the isometric modes. I think, I can deliver a fix for the staggered isometric mode, thanks to Lord C. N. Paste :P Do I just need to check this in on my fork to create a pull request?
* What do you think about predefined image layer properties like repeat-x/y and scroll-x/y?
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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby devnewton » 30 Nov 2012, 10:40

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Re: Not tile based generic map editor.

Postby bjorn » 02 Dec 2012, 12:19

Hey Sauer2, sorry I did not get around to updating the wiki page as fast as I promised. I just updated it to no longer refer to the Qt SDK and included a warning about not choosing Qt 5 on Windows:

https://github.com/bjorn/tiled/wiki/Con ... g-to-Tiled

Also Qt 4.8.4 is out now, so I didn't have to tell people not to use 4.8.3 and where to find 4.8.2. :-)

Anyway I see you got Tiled to compile already, which is great! I hope to have some time for your pull request soon. I don't like this code duplication though and quite possibly I should just move a lot of this common code into the base MapRenderer class. Anyway that's more of a design issue and short-term it would be good if image layers just worked for your kind of map as well.

And yes, I would like there to be the option of repeating the image in either direction or offsetting it by a certain amount. If by scroll-x/y you meant parallax scrolling, that's something which I'd like to support on all layers but that would be a big change design-wise (so for now I'd recommend using custom properties for this).
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