This is the documentation for LEVEL-EDITOR v1.01 © Henrik Stokseth, 1999.


Disclaimer:

I don't accept any responsibility for any damages caused by this software, directly or indirectly. You are all on your own. This editor is free for any usage, as long as you include my name in the credits section of your game. If you find bugs in this software, please send me an e-mail and describe the problem, so that you and other users can benefit from the bugfixes. This software is also copyrighted, according to international laws and regulations. Have an otherwise very good day. :-)


Installation instructions:

The installation process has changed drastically from previous versions. Due to the fact that Level-Editor now comes as a standard DJGPP add-on package, it will be installed the same way. Just unzip the distribution archive with directories/folders to your root DJGPP folder/directory.

For example:
cd \djgpp
pkunzip -d \download\ledit101.zip

Then run make to build all the editor and all the examples. If you didn't get any errors during the process, everything should work just fine... If you want to, you can save some space by running make clean to remove all the unneccesary object files which was generated during compilation.


Usage instructions:

This editor can be used for creating tilemaps, this is especially nice if you're planning to make your own RPG game like Final Fantasy or Zelda.

Start the editor, and click yourself behind the welcome screen. You now see the main editor screen. If you right click with your mouse you'll see a menu pop up. Here you might want to select a DAT file to grab palette and sprites from, because if you don't, you can't draw much. ;-) After that, create a new map or load one from disk. For a beginning you can load the SAMPLE.DAT and the SAMPLE.MAP files, which are enclosed with this package to see how a tilemap could look like. When you load the sprites from the SAMPLE.DAT file, select the PAL_GAME palette. When you've figured out how the editor works, create a map and save it to the disk. You're now ready to use it in a game...

When you have finished drawing your tilemap, you will probably want to put it in a game of yours. I assume you already know programming in DJGPP & Allegro. In your program/game sourcecode insert a line saying:

#include "tilemap.h"

Now you can use all the helper functions in TILEMAP.H to load, display and use your tilemaps. Please feel free to check out the example programs, to see how to use the tilemaps you've created.

Please note that when you're creating your own DAT files using Allegro's Grabber, the sprites that you want to use in your tilemap has to be of the type RLE_SPRITE in order for them to work with Level-Editor.


Keyboard commands:

ESC or X quits the editor.
A displays the about screen.
D load sprites from an allegro datafile.
Cursor keys scroll the tilemap.
CTRL + Cursor keys scroll the tilemap screen by screen.
N create a new tilemap.
S save a tilemap.
L load a tilemap.
R resize tilemap.
I displays the tilemap information screen.
E eraser tool.
F flood-fill tool.
Y layer-fill tool.
T displays the sprite selection screen.
U undo the last edit command.
1..9 select the current drawing layer.
CTRL 1..9 Turns on/off tilemap layers.


Supported:

  • Loading and saving to or from files.
  • Grabbing of sprites from Allegro's datafiles.
  • Any type of sprites either paletted or non-paletted.
  • RLE sprites.
  • Hot keys.
  • Multiple screen resolutions.
  • Any size tilemaps.
  • Any size sprites.
  • Multiple layer tilemaps.
  • Flood fill and Layer fill.
  • Unlimited undo capabilities.
  • Resizing of tilemaps.
  • Displaying tilemap information.
  • Eraser.


    Not supported:

  • Grabbing of sprites from nested datafiles.
  • Bitmaps. (because they're too slow)
  • Animations.


    Planned improvements and known bugs:

  • All known bugs are fixed.


    What's new in this release?

  • Level-Editor is now available for download at Simtel, this means you can download it from any Simtel mirror in the world: http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/
  • Updated the documentation and the makefile.
  • Modified the directory structure.
  • Added functionality to turn on/off tilemap layers in the editor.
  • All the sources are now included in the distribution.


    Thanks goes to:

    Shawn Hargreaves, DJ Delorie and Robert Höhne

    Frode Stokseth, Robin Burrows and Kristoffer Relling


    Contacting the author:

           Snail mail : Henrik Stokseth
                        Porsevegen 18b
                        6011 Ålesund
                        Norway
    
               E-mail : hstokset@hotmail.com
    
    Official homepage : http://members.xoom.com/hstokset/