TileStudio for Lazarus

[Ñuño Martínez]

No problem. I think a remake of a Tile Studio editor/loader is pretty neat. Mike Weiring did a great job with the original, but it lacked some documentation that might have helped, specifically in the loading, to myrecolection. I would just stress that ease of use would have to be the same when it comes to the interface or people will become discouraged from using it. Also what I felt missing was different default tiles in various sizes. 16x16, 32 x 32 and possibly 64 x 64 would be helpful for people to get to know the tool and experiment a bit. I can't quite recall if Tile Studio comes with default tiles.

I can't remember it. I'm sure it has definition files to save projects in different formats.

It would be interesting to try Lazarus Converter for Delphi applications. I see from svn log messages in Lazarus trunk that there has been lot of work on it recently.

Actually I did used Lazarus Converter. It does the conversion missing few things to fix by hand. The result compiles but just doesn't run. I shows the main window but if you click anywhere the program freezes. As I've said I've played with the source code but it was so complex (main form has hundreds of controls), has few comments, most object names are the default ones (i.e: "MenuItem10", etc.), it's hard to follow by myself.

[Ñuño Martínez]

So here I am. I've decided to focus in a new TileStudio. I've started from zero because I'll do somethings different so I'll call it "TileStudio plus".

But I was working on the "tileset editor" part and I've realized that I would change the GUI. Instead of use a single form for everithing I might use a multi-window way, similar than Lazarus and Delphi. The idea is a "project window" (a project will group tilesets, maps and other stuff as DTS files in a single unit), a "tileset editor" window, a "tilemap editor" window and a "DTS description editor" (actually a simple text editor). This way you can see more than one tilemap at a glance, compare tilesets, etc.

What do you think?

[WILL]

Not a bad idea. I'd just make sure that you don't have a huge window clutter. Maybe allow for some tool bar management options too? Allow users to save their tool bar layout perhaps?

[Ñuño Martínez]

Not sure if I've understood you.

For window management I'll add a "window list" menu option as in Delphi/Lazarus. May be also a button or option to "order" them.

About save tool bar layout, actually the Lazarus' toolbar component is very "static", but I was planned to investigate a way to modify it.

I'll post news here when I have something to show.