"Editor Strikes Back" - A GUI editor for DSB

[terkio]

Is there a chance for "Cut Copy Paste"
1) Of a rectangular set of tiles.
2) From a dungeon to another dungeon.

I notice ESB can only open one dungeon at a time.
When I do a second open, it does open a second window, so far so good expecting a second dungeon, but when it loads the second dungeon, it kills the first dungeon windows.

Presently, the only way to have two dungeons open is running two DSB instances.
A "cut copy paste" between two dungeons would then require using the Windows clipboard.
I saw, allegro has no support about the Windows clipboard, so this would be to do with the Win32API.

I presume, the present ESB, single tile "cut copy paste" , is not using the windows clipboard.

[Lord_BoNes]

A "cut copy paste" between two dungeons would then require using the Windows clipboard.
I saw, allegro has no support about the Windows clipboard, so this would be to do with the Win32API.

It could also use a temporary file, that acts as ESB's clipboard (that's where ESB could store it's temporary data).

I definately agree with the idea of being able to select a "chunk" of tiles (EG: 3x3) and copy them to the clipboard, it'd make large dungeon construction far easier... if you have 4 areas that are reasonably similar in layout, for instance.
I would also like to suggest the ability to "rotate" the clipboard, so that the current clipboard's tiles get rotated (items get shifted around on each tile... EG: rotating items CW = N becomes E, E becomes S, S becomes W & W becomes N) and the actual layout of those tiles gets rotated too (once multiple tiles can be selected)...

Here's an example with a 3x3 area selected, with CW rotation (+ is open-space, and # is a wall):

Code: Select all

++#
#+#
#+#

becomes

Code: Select all

##+
+++
###

then further rotation would yeild:

Code: Select all

#+#
#+#
#++

[terkio]

I developped a similar editor using Borland C++ Builder.
A tile could be rotated, Verticaly flipped, Horizontaly flipped. ( Three check boxes: X Flip, Y Flip, Rotate; Giving all 8 possible cases ) ( Rotate was 90° clokwise ).
Cut Copy Paste was over a rectangular block ( eventually spanning over more than one floor level ).
A block could be rotated, Verticaly flipped, Horizontaly flipped too.
There was collision detection when pasting a block.
A block could be added as a macro tile in the set of tiles.
A tile or a macro tile was a file in a dedicated directory. The available tiles "tree view" was built when launching the editor, scanning this directory.

[Paul Stevens]

.....Rotate; Giving all 8 possible cases

Why not allow all 24 permutations of the corners?

[terkio]

My 8 tile cases were: The Identity, the 3 rotates and the 4 symetries.
Once a tile was picked from the "tree view" the user had the icon of the tile displayed in the tool palette.
The user could check some of the 3 "check box" ( X Flip, Y Flip, Rotate ) and see the tile icon registering the transform.

Rotate ----> Rotate 90°
X Flip + Y Flip -----> Rotate 180°
X Flip + Y flip + Rotate -----> Rotate 270°

X Flip -----> Symetry / vertical axis
Y Flip -----> Symetry / horizontal axis
X Flip + Rotate -----> Symetry / + 45° axis
Y Flip + Rotate -----> Symetry / - 45° axis

[Paul Stevens]

My 24 permutations were the identity and 23 additional permutations.

The user would enter a number from 1 to 4 for the NW corner,
a number from 1 to 3 for the NE corner, and a number from
1 to 2 for the SE corner.

4-3-2 would be the identity.
3-2-1 would be clockwise rotate.
3-4-1 would be X Flip
etc.
and 3-4-2 (etc) would be one of 16 permutations not
allowed by your scheme.

[terkio]

I have a trivial request about ESB.
Please change captions in the View menu:
Change: Previous Level and Next Level to: Up and Down ( or Down and Up... who knows which is which and vice versa ).