PICEDIT 1.3 Milestone 6 released

[lance.ewing]

On Friday I built and released the sixth milestone of PICEDIT 1.3.

http://picedit.googlecode.com/files/picedit-1.3M6.jar

This release includes a couple of big features that took a considerable amount of time, but I think the effort was well worth it.

The new features include:

* Multi picture support. You can now open and edit multiple pictures at the same time. Each picture keeps track of its own zoom factor, background image, bands on, ego tester, dual mode, picture position, etc.

* Ego Test mode. This is a feature that allows pictures to be tested by walking King Graham around the room to see how the priority bands and control lines behave. This isn't just your standard priority band tester. It includes actual cell cycling, direction changing and obstacle blocking. It feels like the real thing. And the really cool thing about this feature is that you can slide the picture position around, toggle between visual and priority screens, draw away to your hearts content and the Ego Tester is still happily working away. You can control ego with the arrows keys while you're drawing an obstacle in front of him only seconds before he hits in to it.

* Picture code list. On the left hand side of the window there is now a list of the picture codes for the currently selected picture. It interacts with the picture in both directions, i.e. it shows the current position within the picture and allows the position to be changed by clicking on the relevant picture code. In a future milestone this list will support a lot of editing features, which I'll be the first to admit have been somewhat lacking from PICEDIT.

Let me know what you all think. I am very keen to hear your feedback and suggestions.

[MusicallyInspired]

Very nice. This makes me wish I was making AGI games.

[Collector]

Looking good. Any plans to store preferences? It always starts full screen.

[lance.ewing]

Very nice. This makes me wish I was making AGI games.

Have you tried writing an AGI game in the past?

[lance.ewing]

Looking good. Any plans to store preferences? It always starts full screen.

It is already storing some preferences automatically. I guess that means that they aren't really preferences but rather storage of state. For example, it remembers where the tool bar was docked, what zoom factor was last in use, what the last directory used was and a few others. What I could do fairly easily I think is remember the window size and location and then restore that rather than maximising it on start up.

What the application actually does is start up in its minimum width and size and then immediately maximises. So that than doing that second step, it could restore the previous size and location.

At some point in the future I can create a proper preferences dialog with check boxes for setting such things. Some thing it makes sense to automatically save and restore but for others it probably makes sense to specify a default that it always starts out with regardless of what the state was when the application was shut down.

[Collector]

Being able to set preferences in general is always good, but I don't think it makes much sense for Windows states. Restoring Windows states would follow modern standards for applications.

[lance.ewing]

Unfortunately it would appear that I have broken the Step line tool in Milestone 6. It isn't that surprising since I completely refactored how it stores the picture data. I had very nearly released Milestone 6 a couple of times early last week before discovering various bugs at the last minute, which is why the release was a few days later in the month than I would normally release it. It seems that there is at least this one bug that I missed.

Let me know if you spot any other bugs. There are bound to be a few more.

[Collector]

Some bugs may not show up until someone begins to use it in earnest, but I have less interest in doing anything in AGI than I have in SCI.

[lance.ewing]

I've been quite eager myself to get stuck into adding SCI0 support to PICEDIT. But I decided earlier this year to play catch up first with the rest of the AGI/SCI tools out there with regards to features. I think I'm very nearly there. All that is lacking is some better editing features, which is partly why I added the left hand side Commands list. With that I can add a popup menu on which different options can be selected to apply to the selected commands (I'm adding the ability to select multiple commands at the moment). Delete is the most obvious option in the popup menu but maybe I'll add the ability to "Modify" (e.g. colour in the case of the change colour commands) and maybe copy and paste. I also plan to add some degree of dragging capability for vertices so that lines can be modified, very much like what Joakim Moller did with his Visual AGI Picture Editor.

So that is what I'm focussing on for the next Milestone or two. I guess that last feature I mentioned I can hold off until I've added SCI0 support since V.A.P.E is the only tool that supports it. I don't think the existing SCI0 picture editors have such a "drag point" feature do they? Not sure. Haven't spotted it myself yet. SCI Companion seems to highlight lines but I couldn't seem to drag the points. So maybe I'll get the editing features on the command list working and then release the final 1.3 version; otherwise 2.0 isn't going to have much to contribute other than SCI0 support.

PICEDIT 2.0 is the version I'm planning to add SCI0 support. I've already been structuring things in the source code so that adding SCI0 support shouldn't be too difficult, keeping it in mind which everything I've been adding. Hopefully I'll have something out for SCI0 around April next year. The Christmas/New Year break is going to delay things a bit because I'll be on an overseas holiday to the other side of the world for four weeks over that time. So that may mean that I won't have another 1.3 release out until February.

[Collector]

If by dragging vertices or drag point you mean the ability to manipulate vector nodes, that would be fantastic. That is the single best feature to working in vector. It makes it a snap.

[ScummQuest]

Hi thank you for your hard work- could you possibly provide a fresh link? The Google link hosting the program doesn't seem to work anymore. Thanks mate!

[lance.ewing]

Hi thank you for your hard work- could you possibly provide a fresh link? The Google link hosting the program doesn't seem to work anymore. Thanks mate!

You can get it from here:

http://www.agifans.com/files