looking for map editor for AMOS, (TOME?)

[Damiga]

Hi,
 
After a very quick jump to Blitz basic I'm back to AMOS again.
I've started to make a RPG/adventure game and made a very simple way of creating maps. I do it using "DATA" statements with numbers 1-6 (so far) for different tiles.
 
(I can post code if anyone is interested)
 
But I was thinking that perhaps there are already more advanced map editors out there that I can use with AMOS. I searched the net and I've seen people mentioning something called "TOME", a map editor for amos.
 
Does anyone know where I can get a hold of it?
 
I posted some code to my blog, http://www.amiga.org/forums/blog.php?b=331
So far it's very very basic...

[Hattig]

You're definitely better off using a map editor and loading in the map data from disk rather than using DATA statements! In fact creating a map editor in AMOS can be quite fun too, I did them for a few game projects (i.e., I never finished them) I wrote a long time back in Blitz.

[Damiga]

Yeah I have a feeling it's not the "right" way to use DATA for that kind of stuff, but hey, I'm a noob when it comes to coding =)
 
Do you perhaps have any pointers on writing map editors? Source code would be great, I would actually prefer blitz source, that way I would have to convert them to AMOS.
 
I've found that converting source from Blitz to AMOS has been a great way for me to actually learn something. =)

[bloodline]

Yeah I have a feeling it's not the "right" way to use DATA for that kind of stuff, but hey, I'm a noob when it comes to coding =)

Nothing wrong with using Data statements for map data, but it will make your program more expandable if you load the data from disk, rather than hard code it.

I believe AMOS has a "bank" system for saving Binary data to disk which should make the the process quite straight forward.

Do you perhaps have any pointers on writing map editors? Source code would be great, I would actually prefer blitz source, that way I would have to convert them to AMOS.

How you make it is up to you, and more importantly how you organise your graphic data!

I've found that converting source from Blitz to AMOS has been a great way for me to actually learn something. =)

Just have a go at making something like a paint program that let's you drop tiles onto a grid, that will make a good starting point.

[Damiga]

My next step was reading levels from disk, haven't gotten around to it yet.
I just finished my first attempt at maps/levels yesterday =)
 
Ok, painting with tiles it is then, and I'm gonna investigate the "bank" system in AMOS that you mention. Thanks! =)

[Sidewinder]

Have you checked the AMOS Factory?  I know they used to have a copy of the TOME extension in their downloads section.

[Damiga]

Yeah, but unfortunately their download link is not working at the moment :/

[Damiga]

An update: I found something called "tile studio" (http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/)
It's a level editor that can output blitz basic source code, and it actually uses "DATA" in a very similar way as I've done for my levels.
 
So I feel I'm on the right track here with my original code, and I can get some ideas from the blitz code that tile studio generates.
 
So the next goal is to write a software that I can use to "paint" a level with tiles, and then save it to a file that contains tile BOB# tile x,y, and some other stuff like events, starting position, npc/monster location, and more...
 
=)

[SamuraiCrow]

You don't paste tiles as BOBs in AMOS.  It's too slow.  Instead you paste them as Icons.  Opaque blitting is more than twice as fast as transparent blitting with a mask.

PM me your email and I'll send you the TOME extension and scanned manual.

--edit--
Never mind, I'm reuploading it to the Amos Factory now.

--edit2--
It's up!  And I spent extra time converting the manual scans to a PDF so it takes only 2.5 MiB.

[Damiga]

Many thanks Samuraicrow! I really appreciate this.
 
And I'll look into how to paste as icons, sounds like a great tip! =)

[SamuraiCrow]

If you're having trouble reading the scanned manual, download the OCR version that Asymmetrix did for us.  I've just uploaded it to the server.

[xzerix]

There's an extension which blits tiles faster than standard AMOS paste icon commands (Craft, or Turbo plus, I think) which is available from the AMOS Factory.
 
There are some good tutorials on writing map-based games (or "tile engines") on the web - mostly aimed at PCs.
 
I started with http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/tbw/start.html - It's aimed at wrtiing in Flash (don't worry, *I* don't understand flash, but it was easy enough to follow the logic and re-write in AMOS...) I got through the first few tutorials before real life interrupted me. I'll have a look around for the code I wrote but I doubt I have it any more.
 
S'funny. I have a Dual core PC laptop and *still* come back to the Amiga time and time again 'cos it's so much FUN. :afro:

[SamuraiCrow]

The TurboPlus extension on Amos Factory is the unregistered version.  The Tile Mapper is slightly faster but not much.  Tome isn't optimal either as far as that goes.  Someday I'll get Scrolling Trick converted to a shared library and have Andrew Burton write an extension for it.

[Damiga]

If you're having trouble reading the scanned manual, download the OCR version that Asymmetrix did for us. I've just uploaded it to the server.

 
It was almost impossible to read the scanned manual :lol:
I found the OCR version, great stuff. Thank you very much!

[Damiga]

Well, looks like I got enough info now to last me a while. Thanks again everyone!