The Dink Network

After I finish re-writing the Save Game Editor of Justice (which was written way back in December, though it had a lot of validation bugs that I didn't want to sort out), I think I'll start working on my own Dink Smallwood Map Editor.

My first idea was to not have any graphics. Instead everything would be small dots and numbers.

Then I realized that graphics are probably necessary, but it would be cool to toggle them on and off. Or maybe even toggle certain sequences on and off.

Anyway, the way I'm envisioning it right now it will be a cross between WinDinkedit and Dinkedit. It will only show one screen at a time. Sprite properties will *always* be visible in sprite mode. No more right-clicking and selecting 'Properites', cripe that is annoying.

So if you can think of any odd-ball ideas you want implemented in a Map Editor that aren't covered by WDE or DE, let me know.

I'm working on a Windemere map editor. Perhaps we could work together?

Ya! You guys would probably like the same file supports anyhow. One editor that can write two types of map files? Why not?
One editor to rule them all...
One editor to write games.....
One editor to draw the screens,
And in the Dinknet, sprite them.

if you two work together, a nice feature would be being able to change the tiles (either map tiles or hardness tiles) when you change visions. it's sometimes hard to get around this by just using invisible sprites because sometimes you need awkward shaped hardness areas.

I'm going to use C#, as I still can't understand a lick of C++ concepts. So I doubt that would work very well :-/

I'm using GTK. I'm actually not using as many classes as in Windemere. Editor has perhaps 5. Windemere has about 30.

Hmm... new features that don't blend WinDinkEdit and Dinkedit, that's a tough one...

I honestly can't think of anything, but I've been out of d-moding so long that I couldn't remember anything I might have wanted back then

Here are some things I've been wanting for a while, but I had a hard time trying to convince WC and Gary of adding. Maybe that'll jog some thoughts.

* Sprite snapping. You know how walls and fences are a real pain, because you have to line them up exactly? My idea is to have a 'snapping' mechanism, which would automatically 'snap' the sprite to the correct place when you're close to it (say within 50 pixels). Of course, this feature would be easily toggle-able, because snapping can often be evil.

* Improved 'library' function, based on WDE's not-often used (at least by me) capability to store and retrieve sprite settings.

I have other ideas, but I can't really think of them now.

Edit: oh and maybe tile-painting, so you can just move your mouse around to make a lake/river, instead of placing the tiles individually.

-the ability to have multiple sections of tile copied and put in a library for later use, similar to sprites.

-automatically built in EasyDinkC

-shortcut to quickly grab and include graphics from other games

-built-in graphic editor w/ depthdot and hardness editing. Automatically can create shadows based on position of depthdot

-the ability to have multiple sections of tile copied and put in a library for later use, similar to sprites.

Possible, but I don't really see the need. Unless I'm missing something... its just as easy to go into the tile editor and drag a box over some rocks than it is to select 'rocks 1' from the library.

-automatically built in EasyDinkC

I was thinking of including a simple editor, which would be sort of... different.

-shortcut to quickly grab and include graphics from other games

While not strictly impossible, it would take an enourmous effort to document and implement this, and even then it probably wouldn't even be used more than once or twice.

-built-in graphic editor w/ depthdot and hardness editing. Automatically can create shadows based on position of depthdot

Interesting idea. Depth dot and hardness editing will definately be implemented, but probably not a graphics editor. A shadow-making tool sounds more useful as a seperate tool.

I just had a thought: would anybody find seperate sprite/hardness/tile windows more useful than taking up the same screen real-estate as the main editor screen? So if you have a large desktop, you could see *everything* at once.

Interesting idea. I think that they could be seperate windows within a single window, similar to different documents when one applications is running them. One could maximize one and have it cover the rest if they like the traditional way though. Also, one should be able to change the scale of the screne. They could zoom out for more tiles per window if they liked.

Oooo... 'Nother idea i came up with. Over top of the map screne one can draw 'paths'. These would just be highlighted areas on the map screne. They could help show where dink can go when it isn't obvious due to the barriers not being very visible from the map screne. Also, they could be used to plan screnes that hadn't been mapped yet, showing where they would lead, and which screne they would take up before ever makingg them.

I think that they could be seperate windows within a single window...

Yeah sort-of, I'll be posting a mock-screenshot later on today so you can see what I'm thinking.

Paths

I'm not quite sure what you mean... can you explain more? It sounds rather interesting.

I've uploaded a very early mockup of the Dink Map Editor of Valor.

Note that the screenshot is sort of impossible, as it has two active windows (in reality, the map window would be behind the main one).

Essentially, every main feature (as shown in the screenshot) will have its own seperate window that you can move around at will, or show/hide at a couple clicks of the mouse or a press of a key (probably the F5-F12 keys, possible configurable).

just basically an image superimposed upon the map screen. The author could do a rough trace of the path one can take from one screene to another basicly highlighting the accessible areas of screnes ant path to/from them.

You are using C sharp?!?! wtf

Thank you for agreeing.

Whats c# like anyways? How is it different than c++? I know that C++ is object oriented C, so hat is C#? Did they make it more like java by adding interfaces, and making it so that a class can only extend one class?

i think it would be interesting to integrate something similar to the movie2000 feature of dinkedit. you could click the coordinate where you want the sprite to move, and it would save that information and calculate which direction the sprite would be coming from and such. another idea is the ability to move/change properties of multiple sprites at once. let's say you have 80 pillbugs and you want to set them all to brain 9, but don't especially feel like clicking on each one of them and setting brain 9. you could have a selection box or some kind of filter that selects only that type of sprite/sequence/frame/something and easily massively switch them all to brain 9.

You should be able to draw hardness with mouse. especially house hardness and such.

The only way I will go into detail, is it is a java like programming language to make executable files.

Yeah, and it was made specifically for Microsoft's .NET *cough*pieceofshoot*cough*.

A house without windows is a house without sunlight!

So, don't hate windows.

C# is sort of C++ without memory management and with a hefty standard library. So basically Java with *slightly* different features and *much* better GUI stuff.

I hate memory management. Yes, properly managed memory results in faster execution time when compared to garbage collection and the like, but it also results in prolonged un-fun development time. I want to make things for fun, and I don't want to worry about malloc and dealloc and so on. I'm sure I'm a complete moron for having this opinion, thank you very much.

C# also has a Java-esque standard library, which is unlike C++ where there are like 50 different competing string classes (I think).

The downside when compared to Java is its notorious platform-specific nature: it runs on Windows, Windows, and Windows. Oh and on Linux with Mono, but I don't think that works for the GUI stuff anyway.

Why not just add the option of automatically placing hard tiles when placing sprites? So placing a house would automagically place the hard tiles?

Well, if you're concerned about having to call delete every time, just overload the new and new[] operators and store all allocated memory in a list. Call one function at close to delete the list and voila. No deletes or free's necessary. This is, however, extremely bad practice.

On the multiple windows redink, could you rig it up like 3dsmax and maybe have a couple of veiw ports, and then mix and match what was in the viewport, like being able to set a Tile-Hardness viewport, or a Sprite-Hardness, or maybe even a Attach Scripts - sprites view.

Not exactly. You can just hide/spawn the windows and move them anywhere around the screen, and resize them to however large you want. So you could set it up in a similar manner; have the main screen be in the upper-left of the monitor and the sprites to the left, and the tiles below that.

For a sort-of preview, you can download this very very very early version of the Dink Map Editor of Valor. Note: it cannot open maps or do anything useful. The only thing it can do is spawn Sprite Properties windows and Map windows, and poorly at that. But you can drag them around and resize them however you see fit. The Sprite Properties window is especially cool, try resizing it. You can also make it transparent by right-clicking on it.

how do i make map

/faceplant

headdesk

EDIT: No, but seriously, 2004? Come on?!

Don't you mean facepalm?

"facepalm"

No.

Yo, slashtis, you would probably get a better response by posting a new thread, or better yet, perhaps you should check out the tons of dev & tutorial files available on the site before asking about making a map. With either DinkEdit or WinDinkEdit, it really becomes quite simple, once you learn the keys required to move around in each program.
Resurrecting a 4 year old thread is looked down upon rather strongly in any case. Just my 2 cents.
As for the original poster and thread topic... *waves hands methodically* POOF! you are now a map editor. *looks around* hmm... something went wrong there...