Map Editor, Where to start?

[psycopatchet69]

I am learning Direct draw, and i would like to make a map editor for an Rpg. Can anyone help me here? I dont know where to start...A few things the editor would need
For my first editor, these few simple things would work

-load a bmp (tile set)
-create a new bmp with user defined width and height
-Let the user (mainly me) drag the cursor on the tileset to select a tile in 16/16 intervals (all my tiles are big, but 16/16 intervals)
-Save as new bmp

Can anyone help me with this? Or at least point me somewhere to help me?

[nareth]

you should not save maps as bmp, you should use multi-dimensional array to save the bitmap x, y in tiles

[psycopatchet69]

Alright, then i guess ill do that, but i dont know where to start, can you help me with that

[Halsafar]

On my very first tile engine my map file was simple a text file full of numbers

Each number represented a tile gfx, or an object, or a character.
6x6 square of tiles.
0 0 0 0 0 2
0 1 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 3 0 0
0 4 0 0 0 5
0 0 0 0 0 0

In that case each number repsented a rock, or a tree. All the zero's were the basic grass tileset.

Easy to use and manipulate but not worthy of anything professional.

[psycopatchet69]

Halsafar, do you still have that old editor? If you do, would you mind if i had a look at it to help me figure this out?

[Halsafar]

If I do it will be on one of the sessions on one my many cd-rw backups.

I'll take the time to look around.

As for now what exactly do you need to understand?

Pick a file format, if it the idea above then great its easy.
Write some code to load up the file.
That is all up to you, what I did was have a big array full of graphics which corresponded to the number on the map. It also help all the player graphics and stuff.

So for making maps, I just loaded that same array into icons in the form. Then created a grid using only lines. It is easy to get mouse coords so you can easily know which tile the user is in.
Have him select a tile, click, place the tile in a 2 dimensional array so you can save what id it was.

When you save, just save the file, oop through the array saving row by row.

I'll PM you if I find it. Its gotta be somewhere, it will more clearly show it.

[psycopatchet69]

Well i started work on what i said in my first post, and i uplaoded it.

Im going to add a collision generator for it next, using basically the same method, with creating shapes, and the drag method, and then saving all the coordinates into a txt

[psychotomus]

nice start.

[thejoemeister]

Hey, I just realised that I asked a question about the tiling you used in my new post, Halsafar. I sent you a Private Message, but I guess you didn't get it. So could you reply in the new post about the method you used? If you have that file on a CD-RW backup, that'd be really helpful

[Pixelgamer]

I have made a really simple editor, but it has 2 layers, and 4 different tiles, (two for lower, and 2 for upper layer), and then you can save and load the maps, you can take a look at it =)