Hi everybody!

While waiting for the new VIDE, and to help kicking off the coding competition, I’m giving you
my latest creation: The “Advanced map editor” plugin for VIDE.

It fixes most of the issues I’ve personally had with the built-in editor, and adds some new
features I thought up along the way 😛

Here’s what it does:

-Select/copy/paste/flip large areas at once
-Fill large areas with a single tile, or with a repeating pattern of tiles
-Delete cells on the map
-Remembers the flip state when pasting a tile
-Set the palette to be used for individual map cells
-Play around with the different palette configurations to see the effect it will have
-Keyboard hotkeys for all options
-Set the unused bit 11 of each map cell. I figured it can be used as a flag for starting positions
of objects/enemies or for map collision detection or whatever
-Options to easily see which cells are flipped/have a different palette/are flagged
-As you move around the map, the current tile can be highlighted in the charmap below
-‘Replace all’ option. Copy and paste a single tile, and all other cells using that same tile will be
modyfied as well.
-Unlimited undo steps for all map modifications
-Animation preview. Set up a sub-sequence of tiles for any char on the charmap, adjust the
timer interval in ms, and watch the action as it would look on the VB!
-Complete source code (ugly, but well-commented) is included as a Visual Studio 2008 project (Hi RunnerPack 😉 )
-I’m also including all source code for my previous VIDE plugins (*AS IS*)

Download here

Attachments:

1. 

   adv_map_edit.gif
   

Hi, Dan! 😉

Dude! This plugin is brilliant! And thank you soooo much for releasing the source to your plugins!

I’m going to discuss this plugin now, but I don’t want anyone thinking that I’m complaining, because I realize that these problems are my own fault…

First, the plugin only runs in “NT-based” versions of Windows. While this is a little confusing, it is understandable considering how M$ prefers filthy lucre over its users… But, I digress…

After finding this out, I decided to try it on my (XP powered) laptop. Oops, new problem: The LCD is 1024×768 and the window doesn’t quite fit.

So, since I have the source, I have basically two options: I can modify the window to put the chars and controls beside the map and it will just fit on my laptop, or (preferably) I can try to get it to run on 98 and use my desktop. This will be difficult because:

1) VIDE itself runs fine in 98,
2) there are no error messages, either from Windows or VIDE, and
3) A cursory glance at the code and compiler settings doesn’t seem to show anything NT-specific.

Though I have been considering it for a while, I’m still putting off the third option: installing XP on the desktop. The fourth, buying a new PC, is still well outside my budget…

But, if you have at least an 820-some-odd vertical screen res and XP/2K/Vista then have fun with this great plugin. But, if you are, for whatever reason, unable to view the whole window, let me know the particulars so I have more incentive to modify this thing and know which of the above options would be best to pursue. And if you’re familiar with Win32 code, I would be very grateful indeed if you could figure out why it won’t load in Win98.

Well, when Chris brought up the idea of the coding competition, I was looking forward to all the cool VB programs that would be produced, but I completely failed to realize that a bunch of new tools would come out, too! Between this, dasi’s grit-VB, and VIDE 2.0, the graphical and coding sides are all sewn up! Now, somebody make some more music/sound tools for complete music/sound-idiots (like me)! You can start with source for a VB .NSF player. 😉

[DanB]

Hmm, even though I think that noone should still run 98 since that is more of a punishment than an OS, I’d still like this thing to be backwards compatible… I’ll try to look into it. But my other plugins work fine? Maybe they won’t anymore either if recompiled with Visual Studio 2008… I obviously used an older IDE with other settings (?) when I made them.

Edit:
According to this article, Visual Studio doesn’t support Windows 9x anymore 🙁 Looks like you would have to rebuild it using an older compiler…

I installed win 98 on a virtual pc under vista tonight and you’re right, it doesn’t even show up in the VIDE menu there. Neither does the swap colors plugin which was built with VS 2005, so I guess you never tried that one? 😛

Anyways, you don’t really need to be able to see the whole window to use the plugin. Just use the default timer interval and refrain from using the bottom tiles in the charset 😉

• This reply was modified 16 years, 5 months ago by DanB.

Looks like you would have to rebuild it using an older compiler…

Well, I tried VC6 under Win98 and the resulting DLL won’t even run on the XP PC 😕

I had to change the sprintf_s calls into sprintf ones, but this shouldn’t have made a difference, should it?

(If only VIDE would say why it didn’t load a particular plugin…)

So, I decided to go with the other option and reshape the dialog; which you seem to have purposefully made a particularly difficult task… 😛

Neither does the swap colors plugin which was built with VS 2005, so I guess you never tried that one?

Honestly, I’d be hard pressed to find a reason to use that one at all 😛 but I guess you had your reasons…

Anyways, you don’t really need to be able to see the whole window to use the plugin. Just use the default timer interval and refrain from using the bottom tiles in the charset 😉

Are you sure you don’t work on M$’s debugging team? 😛

That sounds like a “workaround” they probably come up with all the time. 😉

I’ve now made the plugin work on Windows 9x as well as NT, for your convenience 😛
I rebuilt it using Visual C++ 6 under Win98 without problems…
The download link in the first post has been updated.

Have fun! 😀

so it does not work at all, I am a noob and dont understand what u are all writing about..all I know is that the program wont open and not even when I try to get programes that can opes dmg files it works..
so u cant make vb game in wuindows xp?

plz expalin to a noob -_-

Hi, noob 😉

As stated in the news article and throughout this thread, this is a plugin which adds functionality to another program. Namely, Virtual-E’s Virtual Environment. It can be found here:

Virtual-E: the Virtual Boy Emulation Project

Also, one point of clarification:

Neither this program nor the plugin in question “make VB games” they are only a convenient way to produce artwork for said games. It can also be done manually on any operating system or converted with a program called grit. The game itself must be written and compiled and/or assembled.

BTW, questions end with a question mark. It looks like this -> ? and should be near the shift key, which is also quite useful. Statements begin with a capital letter, end with a single period, and are usually separated by a single space.

Thank you