***************************************************************** FAST MAP EDITOR By Peter Corbett ***************************************************************** Fast Map Editor, or FastME, or even FME, is a neat little map editor. Is there anyone out there who doesn't know what a map editor is? Owners of the original AMOS, if it hasn't been removed, will be familiar with TAME. I don't know about Easy AMOS, but AMOS Pro lacks a map editor. There's one in SEUCK as well. OK, for any people who own Easy AMOS / AMOS Pro and don't use SEUCK, here's a little description. In many games, plenty of background images are needed, and even compacted IFFs might cause severe memory headaches, so a cunning system is used. The screen is divided into little squares, in my case 16x16, and in each square a little image, from a pre-definded selection, is displayed. A tiny file is needed to show which image (also known as a Tile or Icon, especially by AMOS programmers) is in each square. A map editor makes this file. Fast Map Editor is one of these map editors. But if AMOS users have TAME, and anyone can buy TOME, why do you need FastME. The answer is FME's *Unique Selling Point*, namely Rapid Icon Acess. Instead of flipping to a different screen every time you want an icon, you simply select one from a palette of 40 16x16 icons at the bottom. Neat, huh? But there are a few limitations. Only 40 icons are allowed (often more than enough) and they must be 16x16 pixel icons. Only 16 colours are allowed. The screen must be a basic 320x200 screen, 20 icons by 12 (with 8 pixels left at the bottom, your score perhaps?). But this is often just the setup programmers want. These restrictions make loading up your maps in AMOS (and AMOS Pro but not Easy AMOS(Menus!)) far easier. Anyone who has used TAME (all credit to Aaron Fothergill, but I just could not use TAME maps in my programs no matter how hard I tried) will know that it is a tricky beast. With FastME it is a different matter altogether. There are also several other neat features availible to the prospecitve map makers, namely: "SCATTER" starfield / sand dune generator Open Boxes of icons "SCATTER" areas in boxes Closed, Open and Scatter boxes defined from any two opposite angles (not just top left and bottom right, you know) Permanent Memory Bank Storage All in all, this makes FastME a very neat little program. But the interersting information about the programmer (Peter Corbett) can wait to the end, here is the Fast Map Editor User Guide (Cue fanfare). ***************************************************************** Fast Map Editor Users Guide ***************************************************************** Ok, so the trumpets have died down, and you want to know how to use my program. First, my list of contents of the disk. Fast Map Editor (Compiled Version) FastME.AMOS (Non-Compiled Version) MapView.AMOS (2 Little Procedures to load and display a map file) IconGrabber.AMOS (Get your icon banks here!) Example_Icon_Picture (Or similar, an IFF partialy explaining IconGrabber) Icon Library Directory (Two sets of 40 Icons for your own maps here, and soon to grow!) Example Maps Directory FastME.Doc (This file!) Fast Map Editor *************** First, a little guide on how to use the thing, then an explanation of the menus. Load up Fast Map Editor, and soon you will get a file requsetor asking for a bank of icons. Choose a file from the selector (go into Icon Library if you haven't made any of your own), that is an AMOS Icon Bank containing 40 (No more, No Less) Icons, all 16 colours and 16x16 Pixels. Within a few seconds, the program should start up properly. Move the mouse pointer to the bottom section of the map, click on an icon, move the pointer to the top, and click. See? Repeat enough times, and you have a respectable map file. Now just save it using the menus, just about to be described. FAST MAP EDITOR MENU GUIDE Item by Item, here is a guide to the menus. PROJECT Load Map Rather preditctable, this loads a map file. This is NOT compatible with TAME, this is an honest permanent data bank, bank 10, with a few bytes of data in it. Be sure to save your original map file. If you haven't, just select Quit or Cancel from the requestor. Save Map A vital little function, this saves your map for loading in AMOS, AMOS Pro or FastME. Remember to add .MAP to the end of the filename. Load Icons This loads a different set of icons. Remeber, AMOS / AMOS Pro standard icon bank, 40 icons, 16 colours, 16x16 pixels per icon. Adjust Colour I added this option to compensate for a bug in one of my programs somewhere, causing colour 3 to go funny. The bug has been ironed out, but if colour 3 turns out strange, note what it should be like in hexadecimal, and select this option. About Semi-compulory blurb about the program. Hardly worth selecting. Quit The last option on this menu, this quits FastME. BE 100% CERTAIN THAT YOU HAVE SAVED YOUR MAP FILE. EDIT Clear Screen This clears the screen with the icon you have selected. There is no "ARE YOU SURE?" requestor, you can always use UNDO. Scatter This turns some of the squares on the screen into the selected icon. To make a starfield or sand dune, make or load icons with four or more different star/sand images, clear the screen with one of them, and use scatter with the rest. Do Box Makes a solid rectangle of icons on the screen. Select your icon, select this, click on one corner of the area where you want your rectangle to be, then click on the opposite corner. UNDO is ready if you make a mistake here. Open Box The same as do box, but it makes an outline of the icons rather than a filled rectangle ScatterBox A combination of Do Box and Scatter. Select an area like Do Box, and a proportion of the images will be changed to the current icon. If you don't understand, try it and see. Undo A last-minute feature, and well worth it. This undoes any of the above options in the edit menu, or all the icons changed since you last changed icon. PREFS Set Scatter Power When you use Scatter or Scatterbox, there is a certain probability that each icon will or won't be changed. This option adjusts the probability. Just select this option, and enter a number from 1 to 10. 1 gives a 1 in 1, or certain, chance of each icon being changed. 2 gives a 1 in 2, or 50/50, chance of each icon being changed. 10 gives a 1 in 10 chance of each icon being changed. My advice is to set this to the number of different icon images in your star/sand field. USING FAST MAP EDITOR MAPS IN YOUR OWN PROGRAMS *********************************************** For this purpose, a file called MapView is provided. The screen is set up, the icons are loaded, and two procedures are used. MAPLOAD loads a map bank, transfers the infomation to the MAP array (predimensioned) and erases the bank. MAPDISP displays the map from the MAP array. Easy? If you want to write your own procedures, here is information on map bank structure. Map banks are ordinary AMOS permanent data banks, 241 bytes long. The bank is usually bank 10. The first byte is blank, possibly to hold a bytesworth of data in your own program. The next 240 bytes hold the map data. They are held in rows along the x-axis of 20 icons length, and after 20 bytes the next row starts. So, in other words, the block at map co-ordinates X,Y is at Start(10)+x+y*20+1. This information will let you write your own procedures for map display. But who wants 1001 procedures and two icon sets? MAKING NEW ICON SETS FOR FAST MAP EDITOR **************************************** Basically, 40 icons, 16x16 pixels, Lowres non-interlaced, 16 colours. Easy? But if you don't like sprite editors and sprite to icon converters, I have provided a much better method. Stage 1: Draw your icons in a paint program. Set up your screen in DPaint X, or other paint program as 16-colour lowres. Set up your colours, making the difference between 0 and 1 highly noticable, and move the display so you can see the top left hand corner. Now draw a grid. A line across the very top, one 16 pixels down from the previous one, and one 16 pixels down from that. Then downwards lines, at 16 pixel intervals, starting at the very left edge. The grid function on DPaint (All versions of DPaint), set to 16 pixels, is very handy. Then, using the magnify function, draw each icon in its slot in the grid. Go over the lines on the top and the left of each icon's "slot", and use every slot. Once you have done this, the image should look like Example_Icon_Picture. Save your IFF, and boot up AMOS. Once in AMOS, load up IconGrabber.AMOS, and run it. Type in 40 at the promt, and load up your IFF picture at the requestor, and wait a few seconds. A requestor will pop up. Choose your directory, enter the name (ending in .ABK) and you now have an icon bank. Easier than the sprite editor, wasn't it? OK, that just about wraps it up. Look at the example maps to see how the icons are used, try using your maps in your own games, and above all, enjoy using the editor. OK, now comes the interesting bit. No use at all, however. ***************************************************************** Why, How and Who? The truth behind FME and its author ***************************************************************** This is now OPTIONAL READING ZONE. You've taken me seriously up until now, and keep it up. I'm Peter Corbett, and 14 years old. I wrote Fast Map Editor for 4 reasons. a) I couldn't get the hang of TAME b) I wanted to do something fairly impressive c) I didn't want to do a game d) I couldn't think of anything else It was only after I got it to a reasonable state that I realised that it was PD quality. I didn't go in much for flexibility. I knew what sort of spec I needed, and worked to them. The icons at the bottom were inspired by, would you believe it, MacPaint. MacPaint had patterns at the bottom, and I cottoned onto the idea. I realised that this was quicker than a seperate screen, and Fast Map Editor - the name - followed logically on. From there I grew the program to state where you made a map from scratch, and then pressed the right mouse button to save then quit. This wasn't exactly flexible, so I made some menus to handle loading and saving. The neatest idea was scatter. I was fed up of manual starfields in my ventures into SEUCK, so I wrote code to do it automatically. The box options followed on, and in a matter of a few days FME was ready. FME was written relatively quickly, on and off, depending on how much homework I had and how bored I was. Enough about Fast Map Editor was written, now for my credits list. My Friend, David Lay. He didn't actually get involved in FastME, but he inspired me with his enthusiasm for programming. He was also responsible for breaking my collar bone in the first rugby lesson in the school year (Sept 92). I hate rugby, so a broken bone ended up being pretty handy. My father, Neil. He programed our Spectrum when we had it (Upgrade path: ZX81 - Spectrum 16K - Spectrum+ - Amstrad CPC 664 - Amiga A500), and constantly keeps me coding rather than gaming. A great help! Terry Pratchett for his excellent Discworld series. He is the funniest author alive, and you should go down your local bookshop NOW! Mike Oldfield for Tubular Bells and Tubular Bells II. Sid Meier and Bruce Shelly for CIVILIZATION, the best strategy game ever, bar none. Plenty of months in it. Dave Smith for Act Of War, 17 Bit 2197. A great game, lots of tactics and big, loud explosions. The map editor in the registered (V1.4) version won't save though, it just quits to WorkBench. Does anyone know why? Francois Linoet and co. for AMOS and AMOS Professional. Commodore for the AMIGA. Best creative computer by a long shot. AMIGA COMPUTING for the Tunes of The Month on the coverdisk. Edd209&Friends is excellent. AMIGA FORMAT and CU AMIGA and AMIGA COMPUTING, very close rivals for best Amiga mag. I think FORMAT is winning with me at the moment. I think that just about wraps it up. HELP-A-POOR-PROGRAMMER-TO-BUY-A-COMPILER-WARE NOTICE Fast Map Editor is freely distributable. You can use the map display procedures freely, and any bits from the map editor itself can be used with a rem in noting that Peter Corbett wrote the procedure/other bit. Fast Map Editor is Optional Shareware. I'm working on FME II at the moment, and it will be AMOS Pro Only. If you own ordinary AMOS, you will need me to compile it. I am saving up for the AMOS Pro Compiler (The ordinary one was used this time), and a fiver or two would help. So if you feel inclined to aid future works from me, send me a little money. Even a letter giving me a few good ideas / noticed bugs / Games involving FME maps PD numbers will help. FME II will use lots more icons (optional), and make maps of variable size, often bigger than a screen. If you want this program to see the light of day, send me something constructive. To this adress: Peter Corbett 21 Swaledale Bracknell Berkshire RG12 7ES. There are two things to remeber. 1) Just One or Two interesing letters / fivers will significantly ease along the programming process. 2) Hardly Anyone sends money to PD authors. One contribution is worth a lot to me as opposed to none. OK, so watch out for Fast Map Editor II, help me along and just generally enjoy FME. ***************************************************************** The End ***************************************************************** Well done for reading through that lot. I must stop now, its a bit late and I've run out of things to say. Peter Corbett.