New Java version of PICEDIT (AGI Picture Editor)

[lance.ewing]

Hi all,

I've been away from the AGI community for about a decade but recently my interest was renewed again. For some reason I felt like revisiting my AGI picture editor tool PICEDIT. I've been a Java developer for the past 13 years and have no desire to write C code anymore, so I decided as a starting point to extending PICEDIT I would rewrite the tool in Java. I have now completed this conversion to Java and the first beta release is available on my new web site below:

www.agifans.com

I'd be very keen for as many AGI/SCI fanmade game fans as possible to download PICEDIT 1.2.1 and let me know what you think. You'll need to download and install Java 6 first but after that all you'll need to do is double click on the downloaded PICEDIT 1.2.1 JAR file. The good thing about it being written in Java is that it is instantly available for all platforms... so you'll be able to run it on Windows (XP/Vista/7), Linux, Mac, etc.

It is very likely that there are still bugs in it so I apologise in advance for this. What I'm really looking for is testers though. I'll fix bugs as soon as they are reported.

From this point I'm hoping to add a lot more features. At the moment it is almost the same as the original PICEDIT 1.2 that I released back in 1997. Over the next month or so I'll be adding many more features. It would be good to get some suggestions from the AGI and SCI community about the features that should be added.

I look forward to hearing all of your feedback.


Lance

[MusicallyInspired]

Good to see you here, Lance! I remember when I was a kid 12/13 years ago and just learning about all this AGI/SCI stuff and being amazed at what was possible for actually creating and editing AGI stuff. And with most of the programs being written by you and Peter Kelly, you were one of my heroes at the time .

[lance.ewing]

Hey thanks! Yeah, I had a lot more time on my hands back then. I was at uni at that point and living at home, so a lot of spare time to work on things like this. Now I'm married with two kids so unfortunately I can't get as involved as I once could. I guess that's why I thought I'd pick one thing (PICEDIT) and make that my focus. - Seems like the interest in AGI has dropped while SCI has picked up though? Is that the case?

Did you give the Java version of PICEDIT a try? Let me know what you thought. Any suggestions for features?

[MusicallyInspired]

Yes, I gave it a whirl. I never really drew anything, but I was experimenting with the interface and it all seems a little more fluid and easier than what I remember of the good old DOS version. Was the Load Background function there in the old one? I assume that loads an image that you can trace over. Either way, that's a nice feature.

[lance.ewing]

Yeah the background image feature was there in the original. It was a bit harder to use though because you had to run PICEDIT with a command line parameter and it had to be a PCX file (an obscure image format that most of us would have forgotten existed nowadays). I think it also had to be exactly the right size. None of these limitations exist in the Java version.

In theory it should be smoother than the original. I used a much faster fill and line routine and I've still got the biggest speed improvement up my sleeve.

[klownstein]

Cool!
I'm going to download this now and give it a whirl!

-klownstein

[lance.ewing]

Cool!
I'm going to download this now and give it a whirl!

-klownstein

So what did you think? Have you switched to using this version of PICEDIT for drawing the pictures for your The Gourd of the Beans game? It would be great to get some feedback from someone that is using the tool on an active AGI game project.

[MusicallyInspired]

Indeed. It's nice to have a new AGI project for the first time in a while now.