Tileset editing tools?
Brandon J. Van Every
free tilesets I've seen. I think I need to tackle a core problem that I
don't have a clue about. What tools do artists use to make their tile
editing jobs easier? The typical problem is you don't just want to edit an
individual tile, you want a whole sheet of identically sized tiles. In the
square tile case, are there art tools which mask off the tiles, or help
create wraparound textures, or help match the edges of tiles? Are there hex
tile editing tools out there somewhere? I really don't want to waste my
time coding up art tools to do these kinds of jobs, I want something
off-the-shelf.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
- Ed Mckenzie
Gerry Quinn
>Ok, honestly I think my own Programmer Art will probably be as good as any
>free tilesets I've seen. I think I need to tackle a core problem that I
>don't have a clue about. What tools do artists use to make their tile
>editing jobs easier? The typical problem is you don't just want to edit an
>individual tile, you want a whole sheet of identically sized tiles. In the
>square tile case, are there art tools which mask off the tiles, or help
>create wraparound textures, or help match the edges of tiles? Are there hex
>tile editing tools out there somewhere? I really don't want to waste my
>time coding up art tools to do these kinds of jobs, I want something
>off-the-shelf.
I think there's a package called Pro-Motion, that attempts to do like
DPaint on the Amiga, that attempted to do such things. You'd probably
be better off making your own tool, though. This sort of stuff is too
ad hoc for any standard tool to implement.
Gerry Quinn
--
http://bindweed.com
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G.I.L
> In article <boc89f$1bl98j$1...@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de>, "Brandon
> J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_a...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Ok, honestly I think my own Programmer Art will probably be as good
>> as any free tilesets I've seen. I think I need to tackle a core
>> problem that I don't have a clue about. What tools do artists use
>> to make their tile editing jobs easier? The typical problem is you
>> don't just want to edit an individual tile, you want a whole sheet
>> of identically sized tiles. In the square tile case, are there art
>> tools which mask off the tiles, or help create wraparound textures,
>> or help match the edges of tiles? Are there hex tile editing tools
>> out there somewhere? I really don't want to waste my time coding up
>> art tools to do these kinds of jobs, I want something off-the-shelf.
>
> I think there's a package called Pro-Motion, that attempts to do like
> DPaint on the Amiga, that attempted to do such things. You'd probably
> be better off making your own tool, though. This sort of stuff is too
> ad hoc for any standard tool to implement.
Yeah. Some of them actually use MS Paint!
g
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
> Ok, honestly I think my own Programmer Art will probably be as good as any
> free tilesets I've seen. I think I need to tackle a core problem that I
> don't have a clue about. What tools do artists use to make their tile
> editing jobs easier? The typical problem is you don't just want to edit an
> individual tile, you want a whole sheet of identically sized tiles. In the
> square tile case, are there art tools which mask off the tiles, or help
> create wraparound textures, or help match the edges of tiles? Are there hex
> tile editing tools out there somewhere? I really don't want to waste my
> time coding up art tools to do these kinds of jobs, I want something
> off-the-shelf.
When I have to modify them, I just use Gimp <http://www.gimp.org/>.
It's even been ported to Windoze and Mac.
For drawing, Gimp's probably not the best tool in the world, but for
modifications of images intended for on-screen use (rather than
printing), it is.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"I believe in communication. If I communicate with you every so often,
you'll be bothered by what I say enough that you won't ask me to, which
means more sleep for me." -Something Positive, 2003Sep22
Brandon J. Van Every
>> tools which mask off the tiles, or help create wraparound textures,
>> or help match the edges of tiles?
>
> It's even been ported to Windoze and Mac.
Does Gimp have any useful tools for masking individual tiles in a sheet of
tiles? How about wraparound and edge matching? I did a RTFM of Gimp's
index, for "mask" and "tile." Must admit I started yawning immediately.
Hopefully you can impart your tremendous domain knowledge...
Carnac
message news:bofo7g$1dqo0i$1...@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de...
> > When I have to modify them, I just use Gimp <http://www.gimp.org/>.
> > It's even been ported to Windoze and Mac.
>
> Does Gimp have any useful tools for masking individual tiles in a sheet of
> tiles? How about wraparound and edge matching? I did a RTFM of Gimp's
> index, for "mask" and "tile." Must admit I started yawning immediately.
> Hopefully you can impart your tremendous domain knowledge...
Write one yourself then, or aren't you capable of that? :P
Brandon J. Van Every
I am capable of that, but your comment doesn't have anything to do with
saving labor in the real world. Do you know the answer to my questions
about Gimp?
Brandon J. Van Every
> In the square tile case, are there art
> tools which mask off the tiles, or help create wraparound textures,
> or help match the edges of tiles?
Incidentally, here's an open source tool I already knew about, but I haven't
really evaluated it yet.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tilestudio/
Think I'll do that now.
Brandon J. Van Every
>
> Incidentally, here's an open source tool I already knew about, but I
> haven't really evaluated it yet.
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/tilestudio/
> Think I'll do that now.
It looks like a pretty good tool!
Erik Max Francis
> Write one yourself then, or aren't you capable of that? :P
You haven't been reading these groups for very long, have you?
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
\__/ Gore Vidal
Carnac
news:3FAB8264...@alcyone.com...
> Carnac wrote:
>
> > Write one yourself then, or aren't you capable of that? :P
>
> You haven't been reading these groups for very long, have you?
Not really, so fill me in in what I've been missing. ;)
Carnac
> >> Does Gimp have any useful tools for masking individual tiles in a
> >> sheet of tiles? How about wraparound and edge matching? I did a
> >> RTFM of Gimp's index, for "mask" and "tile." Must admit I started
> >> yawning immediately. Hopefully you can impart your tremendous domain
> >> knowledge...
> >
> > Write one yourself then, or aren't you capable of that? :P
>
> I am capable of that, but your comment doesn't have anything to do with
> saving labor in the real world. Do you know the answer to my questions
> about Gimp?
By the time you find something which is up to your standards, a good
programmer could have written a working version, completely customised to
his/her needs. ;)
Gerry Quinn
>Ok, honestly I think my own Programmer Art will probably be as good as any
>free tilesets I've seen. I think I need to tackle a core problem that I
>don't have a clue about. What tools do artists use to make their tile
>editing jobs easier? The typical problem is you don't just want to edit an
>individual tile, you want a whole sheet of identically sized tiles. In the
>square tile case, are there art tools which mask off the tiles, or help
>create wraparound textures, or help match the edges of tiles? Are there hex
>tile editing tools out there somewhere? I really don't want to waste my
>time coding up art tools to do these kinds of jobs, I want something
>off-the-shelf.
With tile matching, it might be easiest to load up a standard paint
program (PSP is what I use) and make a thin square grid. Then draw
borders (shores etc.) in another colour. Both colours are some ugly
magenta or whatever that you will get rid of eventually. Save the
template, and work on copies, filling in with textures or whatever until
you are happy. If you draw enough shore, you will have several options
for each shore tile.
Draw it several times bigger than the final version and don't use
anti-aliasing (not using AA means you can select areas easily, and cut
and paste things). Shrink the grid, sharpen the image, and slice into
squares.
I found a trick for making wraparound textures. Whatever elements are
to go into them (trees or whatever) make a 3x3 array of such trees, as
far apart as your texture size. Then paste the central one randomly
onto your texture. If you paste half-way off the left edge, the right
hand image on your 3x3 array will appear coming in on the right. (Of
course this method can be used for hexes or other grids too.)
Mind you, if I wanted to make animated wraparound textures, I'd probably
write a tool.
Gerry Quinn
>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>
>> Incidentally, here's an open source tool I already knew about, but I
>> haven't really evaluated it yet.
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/tilestudio/
>> Think I'll do that now.
>
>It looks like a pretty good tool!
It is quite nice - well presented too. I guess not all OS is bad ;-)
Nathan Mates
Carnac <car...@realitys-edge.com> wrote:
>> > Write one yourself then, or aren't you capable of that? :P
>> You haven't been reading these groups for very long, have you?
>Not really, so fill me in in what I've been missing. ;)
Number of projects Brandon has listed as having worked on, and
completed, in the past 5 years: zero.
Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates - personal webpage http://www.visi.com/~nathan/
# Programmer at Pandemic Studios -- http://www.pandemicstudios.com/
# NOT speaking for Pandemic Studios. "Care not what the neighbors
# think. What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?" -R.A. Heinlein
Brandon J. Van Every
>
> By the time you find something which is up to your standards, a good
> programmer could have written a working version, completely
> customised to his/her needs. ;)
Regarding tile editing tools you are wholly, utterly, completely wrong, as I
have proven.
That said, I *did* just sink 2 months into reading just about every project
description on Sourceforge - tools, 3D engines, game projects in either
Python or C#, and maybe a few other odds and ends. A lot of the landscape
of open source development is a waste of time, but I did come up with a few
things that really are worth knowing about. I definitely don't want to
chase after "unknowns" too much or too often anymore, but I did find some
things for having exerted the effort of searching.
I'm also better at eyeballing projects for whether they're going to be worth
trying to compile or not. The short course is, Sourceforge has to list it
as at least "beta" if it's going to be worth your time. Also, they have to
have released project files, and there has to be project activity. If any
of these things are missing, skip it.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
> Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes wrote:
>> Brandon J. Van Every <try_vanevery_a...@yahoo.com>
>>> In the square tile case, are there art
>>> tools which mask off the tiles, or help create wraparound textures,
>>> or help match the edges of tiles?
>> When I have to modify them, I just use Gimp <http://www.gimp.org/>.
>> It's even been ported to Windoze and Mac.
> Does Gimp have any useful tools for masking individual tiles in a sheet of
> tiles?
Yes. Do a rectangular selection, and all paint operations will only
happen in that region; most selection operations can be added or
subtracted from the current region. You can also toggle the red button,
and then paint operations will add or subtract from the selection mask,
so you can get pixel-by-pixel selection.
> How about wraparound and edge matching?
For that, you have to do it yourself with almost any paint program.
Gerry had some good advice on that downthread.
> I did a RTFM of Gimp's
> index, for "mask" and "tile." Must admit I started yawning immediately.
> Hopefully you can impart your tremendous domain knowledge...
They're not going to refer to anything like that, any more than they'd
talk about how to paint trees and houses. But it has essentially
everything Photoshop does and more, plus scripting. You could write
scripts to solve various tile-based problems, but I haven't bothered for
that, since the built-in tools do everything I need most of the time.
Thankfully, the Gimp Book is a free etext, and it's very
comprehensive. I use that, and Gimp Essential Reference from New Riders
when I need a faster summary of some technique.
Erik Max Francis
> Regarding tile editing tools you are wholly, utterly, completely
> wrong, as I
> have proven.
How have you proven that?
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Whoever contends with the great sheds his own blood.
\__/ Sa'di
Carnac
> Carnac wrote:
> >
> > By the time you find something which is up to your standards, a good
> > programmer could have written a working version, completely
> > customised to his/her needs. ;)
>
> Regarding tile editing tools you are wholly, utterly, completely wrong, as
I
> have proven.
>
> That said, I *did* just sink 2 months into reading just about every
project
> description on Sourceforge - tools, 3D engines, game projects in either
> Python or C#, and maybe a few other odds and ends. A lot of the landscape
> of open source development is a waste of time, but I did come up with a
few
> things that really are worth knowing about. I definitely don't want to
> chase after "unknowns" too much or too often anymore, but I did find some
> things for having exerted the effort of searching.
You just sound like you're full of shit to me. ;)
Carnac
news:3fabd11f$0$41292$a186...@newsreader.visi.com...
> In article <HyLqb.759$aT....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
> Carnac <car...@realitys-edge.com> wrote:
> >> > Write one yourself then, or aren't you capable of that? :P
>
> >> You haven't been reading these groups for very long, have you?
>
> >Not really, so fill me in in what I've been missing. ;)
>
> Number of projects Brandon has listed as having worked on, and
> completed, in the past 5 years: zero.
Yeah, he sounds like he's full of crap. ;)
Brandon J. Van Every
Welcome to my killfile. Enjoy your rudeness and your Not Invented Here
attitudes.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law):
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of
a person being called a troll approaches one RAPIDLY."
Brandon J. Van Every
>
> Yes. Do a rectangular selection, and all paint operations will only
> happen in that region; most selection operations can be added or
> subtracted from the current region.
I suppose a snap-to grid + that masking trick would get the icon-by-icon job
done. 'Twould also be nice if I could view only the art that's visible
through the mask, and not have to look at anything else. Sometimes you
don't want to see the clutter and business of all the competing tiles.
Carnac
> >> That said, I *did* just sink 2 months into reading just about every
> >> project description on Sourceforge - tools, 3D engines, game
> >> projects in either Python or C#, and maybe a few other odds and
> >> ends. A lot of the landscape of open source development is a waste
> >> of time, but I did come up with a few things that really are worth
> >> knowing about. I definitely don't want to chase after "unknowns"
> >> too much or too often anymore, but I did find some things for having
> >> exerted the effort of searching.
> >
> > You just sound like you're full of shit to me. ;)
>
> Welcome to my killfile. Enjoy your rudeness and your Not Invented Here
> attitudes.
Hhahahahahhaha - what a joke. ;)
Erik Max Francis
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_a...@yahoo.com> wrote
> in
> message news:bohvi0$1er6h5$1...@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de...
>
> > Welcome to my killfile. Enjoy your rudeness and your Not Invented
> > Here
> > attitudes.
>
> Hhahahahahhaha - what a joke. ;)
Welcome to the Brandon's Killfile Club. Unfortunately it's not very
exclusive; half of Usenet is in it.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
\__/ Aldous Huxley
Jan Langermann
> square tile case, are there art tools which mask off the tiles, or help
> create wraparound textures, or help match the edges of tiles?
editing.
In Adobe Photoshop (and probably other programs as well) you can create a
grid of helper lines.
If, for example, your tiles are 40x40, you could set a horizontal line every
40 pixels and do the same thing vertically.
You can set the tools to automatically snap to the grid, particularly useful
with the selection tool.
After you have selected one of those cells, you can safely draw or apply
filters inside that area without messing up the rest of the image file (but
don't blame me if you still do ;) ).
Eternal Vigilance
Carnac wrote:
Is the source code for GIMP available (open source???) so that he could
add
the functionality he needs without reinventing the wheel as you propose???
(assuming of course that its not written in gibberish C...)
Eternal Vigilance
"Brandon J. Van Every" wrote:
> Ok, honestly I think my own Programmer Art will probably be as good as any
> free tilesets I've seen. I think I need to tackle a core problem that I
> don't have a clue about. What tools do artists use to make their tile
> editing jobs easier? The typical problem is you don't just want to edit an
> individual tile, you want a whole sheet of identically sized tiles. In the
> square tile case, are there art tools which mask off the tiles, or help
> create wraparound textures, or help match the edges of tiles? Are there hex
> tile editing tools out there somewhere? I really don't want to waste my
> time coding up art tools to do these kinds of jobs, I want something
> off-the-shelf.
>
> --
> Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>
> "We live in a world of very bright people building
> crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
> - Ed Mckenzie
I think that the new version of PaintShopPro has a animation paint addon
but its not on my computer any more (30 days ran out) - that was more than a
year ago.
I seem to remember its interface was a bit flakey in some state transitions
but they may have fixed some of that since.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
wrote on Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:15:29 GMT:
> Carnac wrote:
>> "Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_a...@yahoo.com> wrote in
>> message news:bofp5i$1ecejq$1...@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de...
>> > saving labor in the real world. Do you know the answer to my questions
>> > about Gimp?
>> By the time you find something which is up to your standards, a good
>> programmer could have written a working version, completely customised to
>> his/her needs. ;)
> Is the source code for GIMP available (open source???) so that he could
> add
> the functionality he needs without reinventing the wheel as you propose???
> (assuming of course that its not written in gibberish C...)
It is open source, but better than that, it has full scripting
capabilities, with both Scheme and Python. However, I haven't needed to
script anything to work with tiles yet. YMMV.
Gerry Quinn
>I think that the new version of PaintShopPro has a animation paint addon
>but its not on my computer any more (30 days ran out) - that was more than a
>year ago.
Might be useful - I only have PSP6.
However, it's probably the case that if you want more than trivial
animation these days, you'll fire up a 3D graphics tool.
Nick Reed
news:S9Oqb.4808$bD.1...@news.indigo.ie...
> In article <bofq9b$1bc20f$1...@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de>, "Brandon J. Van
Every" <try_vanevery_a...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> >>
> >> Incidentally, here's an open source tool I already knew about, but I
> >> haven't really evaluated it yet.
> >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/tilestudio/
> >> Think I'll do that now.
> >
> >It looks like a pretty good tool!
>
> It is quite nice - well presented too. I guess not all OS is bad ;-)
> Gerry Quinn
Yes, it's quite a nice little package. I've used it for several projects and
it's been quite useful. That's not to say it doesn't have its flaws, but
everything does, and this has saved me quite a bit of time writing something
similar so for that I'm thankful. :)
Ncik.
Pete Taylor
news:S9Oqb.4808$bD.1...@news.indigo.ie:
> In article <bofq9b$1bc20f$1...@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de>, "Brandon J.
> Van Every" <try_vanevery_a...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>>
>>> Incidentally, here's an open source tool I already knew about, but I
>>> haven't really evaluated it yet.
>>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/tilestudio/
>>> Think I'll do that now.
>>
>>It looks like a pretty good tool!
>
> It is quite nice - well presented too. I guess not all OS is bad ;-)
>
> Gerry Quinn
Indeed! I've only just looked at this and first impressions are good. Time
will tell if it's as useful as I hope it will be. I have to say I'm very
excited though!
I was getting depressed thinking I'd have to write my own tool which
probably would have taken me longer than creating my game. My enthusiasm
for writing "tools" is far less than for writing games (it's too much like
my day job)!
Thanks Brandon!
Pete
Eternal Vigilance
Gerry Quinn wrote:
> In article <3FAF8FD1...@oneeye.com>, Eternal Vigilance <wo...@oneeye.com> wrote:
> >I think that the new version of PaintShopPro has a animation paint addon
> >but its not on my computer any more (30 days ran out) - that was more than a
> >year ago.
>
> Might be useful - I only have PSP6.
>
> However, it's probably the case that if you want more than trivial
> animation these days, you'll fire up a 3D graphics tool.
>
I think the question was about tile animation (very few frames, low res).
Some of the newer games do look like they are using much fancier unit and
terrain animations (even though they still might be static frame animation).
A number look like they were done using 3D models...
Eternal Vigilance
"Alfie [UK]" wrote:
> Some time on Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:20:06 GMT, Eternal Vigilance
> <wo...@oneeye.com> posted that:
> >I think that the new version of PaintShopPro has a animation paint addon
> >but its not on my computer any more (30 days ran out) - that was more than a
> >year ago.
> >
> >I seem to remember its interface was a bit flakey in some state transitions
> >but they may have fixed some of that since.
>
> Paint Shop Pro 7 (and I assume PSP 8) will create what it calls
> 'seamless patterns' from a selection within an image, effectively making
> a tile that tesselates without visible borders around the tile.
>
> Was that what you meant ?
The interface I remember was like a strip of film (multiple frames) and had
controls to edit/insert/clone/play frames (onion skins etc) -- cel art type
manipulations.
>
>
> --
> Alfie
> <http://www.delphia.co.uk/>
> How come abbreviated is such a long word?
Corey Murtagh
<snip>
> Some of the newer games do look like they are using much fancier unit and
> terrain animations (even though they still might be static frame animation).
> A number look like they were done using 3D models...
...but most are pre-rendered, so you're back down to displaying a
limited frame-based anim. You only need to do 3D anims for true 3D
games, although you can do them for anything if you like. Certainly
makes it simpler to do full rotation, skinning, mutatable animations, etc.
--
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"
