Tile Joiner Released

[jdarling]

Tile Joiner is a small Lazarus application that is opensource freeware and allows you to take a series of existing bitmap images and join them into a final image. It can also generate a description file for the generated image via a Lua Export Script.

Read more and download at http://www.eonclash.com/ViewProduct.php?ProductID=22 (http://www.eonclash.com/ViewProduct.php?ProductID=22)

<center>http://www.eonclash.com/TileJoiner/TileJoiner.jpg</center>

[cairnswm]

Tried giving this a go for my new game - while it works really nicely there were a couple of issues

1. Need a load save config file also - so that image sets can be modified later
2. Need a delete image from list
3. Option to use a subset rectangle of the original image (ie if the image is 128x128, needs an option to use the centre 100x100)
4. option to keep all images the same size on the final output - so if some images are 128x128 and some 96x96 then can indicate a 100x100 for all images.

As I have the source I may try to find the time to make the changes - but just thought I'd let you know what I had found.

[jdarling]

I've also got a few requests for more image types support. Guess I'll have to start building a list and attempting to find some image loading routines that work cross platform :).

I thought about the scaling, cropping, and segmenting (breaking an existing image into multiple images), but hadn't thought of removal of a frame. I'll make sure and add it to my list of requests as I get time :).

If you do put anything in, I'd love to have the changes so the rest of the world could look/use them. That is of course if you don't mind.

[Robert Kosek]

Uh, if I'm not mistaken, the Vampyre Imaging Library (http://imaginglib.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=doc) is cross platform, and should suit your purposes. It is written in native pascal, for VCL/LCL applications with direct interfacing with texture loading for GL, SDL, and DirectX.

I don't know why people seem to avoid this package. :? Looks pretty spiffy to me!

[JernejL]

To anyone trying to figure the license under which vampyre is licensed, let me help you all: it is licensed under LGPL or MPL. It takes some digging to find out this as it doesn't say it on the website.

[jdarling]

Uh, if I'm not mistaken, the Vampyre Imaging Library (http://imaginglib.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=doc) is cross platform, and should suit your purposes. It is written in native pascal, for VCL/LCL applications with direct interfacing with texture loading for GL, SDL, and DirectX.

I don't know why people seem to avoid this package. :? Looks pretty spiffy to me!

Actually, Vampire is one of the libraries that I've been looking into. The only (main) problem is that I'm spending time on my compo entry and not on my other projects/components :).

Depending on need, of the my entry that is, I may just make some updates to the TileJoiner.

[Galfar]

To anyone trying to figure the license under which vampyre is licensed, let me help you all: it is licensed under LGPL or MPL. It takes some digging to find out this as it doesn't say it on the website.

I'll put it on more visible place then. Currently licences are mentioned in online/offline docs and on SourceForge project page.
If anyone has some Vampyre related questions please post them.

[Robert Kosek]

Actually, Vampire is one of the libraries that I've been looking into. The only (main) problem is that I'm spending time on my compo entry and not on my other projects/components :). It was more of a vague "I don't get it remark," but it is good to see someone else is interested in it. There's no purpose in me using it at the moment, as Asphyre can load just about everything I need at the moment.

Jeremy, any way/plans to allow differently sized sprites joined into an image, padded to a power of 2 size? The exported frame information would be really handy, but so would the ability to join irregularly sized tiles -- though it might be harder to implement.

[cairnswm]

I have my own little tiling app - but its very buggy and I dont think anyone else would be able to understand it.

As images are added it records them and saves a custom text file with a list of all the images. This allows me to reopen the project and add/remove images from the list.

[JernejL]

I'll put it on more visible place then. Currently licences are mentioned in online/offline docs and on SourceForge project page.
If anyone has some Vampyre related questions please post them.

cool, since i had to check out the license and usually it's written on the website itself, since i am thinking to use the library in linux for some commercial OCR program preprocessing i had to check out, if the library allow such use (which both lgpl and MPL that you use, do permit).

[jdarling]

Jeremy, any way/plans to allow differently sized sprites joined into an image, padded to a power of 2 size? The exported frame information would be really handy, but so would the ability to join irregularly sized tiles -- though it might be harder to implement.

It already does all of that. In fact, Lua is built in so that you can write custom exporters, sorters, and added functionality. Full source for Lazarus is supplied along with the download.

The things that arn't supported (yet) are:
Sizing all "tiles" to the same size
Scaling output
PNG, TIFF, TGA, or other input/output image types (currently only does BMP)
Cropping of imported images
Segmenting of imported images

[cairnswm]

Just as some friendly rivalry on PGD I thought I'd release a competiting product to jdarlings Tile Joiner :)

So have a look at Image Tiler (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewtopic.php?p=31392) and tell me what you think. :)