CharPad C64 Pro + SpritePad C64 Pro

Good morning!

Yes tile tag data can be exported from CharPad Pro although currently only in the form of an asm/text file...

File >> Import/Export >> Text/Asm >> Export Tile Set (and attributes)

If it would be more convenient to have the data as a raw binary file then you could just trim out the tile data section in that file, assemble it and trim off the first two bytes of the resulting PRG file (the load address).

 A binary export option might be useful though I guess, I will add it to the todo list.

Hello,

Exporting colour maps is currently quite limited, you can only do it for the whole map right now and only for the Colour RAM values (so it is not so useful in the bitmap modes as they use 3 matrix colours).

The easiest way to export a colour map (file) for just a selected area of a map is probably this...

1. Select the desired map area.

2. in the Map menu (visible when the map form is focused), choose Crop.

3. File -> Import/Export -> Binary -> Export Colour Map (per map char cell, CmLo).

The Export Colour Map option is also available as a text file...
File -> Import/Export -> Text -> Export Colour Map (per map char cell, CmLo).

Then you can undo the map crop and select a different area for export if required.

I hope that helps!

Ps. the "per map char cell" colour map can also be exported from a project that uses tiles, CharPad figures out the correct char colour values.

Hello,

Thank you for your appreciation and for your question, it is something that has come up many times over the years.

The simple answer is that it is currently only possible to have 1 charset, 1 tile-set and 1 map.

We have thought about adding support for multiple maps many times over the years and while it would be theoretically possible, it also introduces many complications, for instance, currently each project has a single display mode, a single matrix colouring method and at least one common colour (ie. screen colour)...

If multiple map support were added, we would soon be asked to allow different display mode, colouring method etc for each map, some people would then not be happy that all maps have to use the same char-set or the same tile-set, so would request multiple support for those as well.

The point I am making is that any introduction of multiple maps, tile-sets or chars  would almost certainly add enormous complexity to the program, opening a proverbial "can of worms".

In the end, we decided to just keep it simple, a lot of "multi-map" situations can be resolved by simply drawing all required maps into one big map and using the Flexi-grid feature to export the data for each sub-map separately if required.

Also, would you really want to use the same char-set on ie. all 16 levels of your game? that could be quite boring for the players (ok many classic 80's games did this!)

So I'm sorry if this answer is disappointing but I hope you see what I mean about the "can of worms" it could become, it's really not as simple as it may seem and there is usually an alternative route that can be taken.

Cheers.

Hi, thank you very much for supporting us with your purchase, it is really appreciated.

Please email me (subchrist@protonmail.com) and I will try and help you ASAP.

Hi, if you want to use more than 256 tiles then you can do it yes, you will just need to export the map data as 12bit or 16bit.

Exporting as 12bit or 16bit is currently only available (from CharPad) as text/asm/ascii but you can still use it in your project, just include the exported text as a link in your source code and build your project.

See the import/export menu items.

ps. unless you plan to dynamically load the data as binary from disk on the C64 at runtime, in that case you *will* actually need it in binary form I guess, CharPad can't currently do it but there are workarounds.

Hi,

Thank you very much for your purchase, your support is greatly appreciated.

On the Commodore 64,  "multi-colour text mode"  allows both hi-res and multi-colour (wide) pixel chars, the choice is made using the colour value in each screen matrix cell (ie. the relevant Colour RAM byte), 

Colours 0-7 make the cell "hi-res" and colours 8-15 make the cell multi-colour.

So in CharPad, to make characters appear in "text - multi-colour mode"...

1. Choose "Text - Multi-colour mode" on the Project form..

2. Select "Colour Matrix (low nyb)" on the Project form.

3. Choose any colour on the bottom row of the colour palette (these will have red dashes on them to indicate "wide pixel").

It has always worked this way and always will, there is nothing to fix.

Ps. "multi-colour bitmap mode" works differently, all chars are wide pixel. 

Cheers.

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback and the bug report, I have saved a copy of your post and will look into these things.

Yes the size of a tile-set is currently limited to 65536 and a char-set is limited to 500,000, allowing more tiles would be simple enough, although the CTM project file format only supports 16-bit values (max 65536) for both chars and tiles, so you would still need to reduce the count before a project could be saved.

Was the bug you found seen when doing a binary file import of map data?

Anyway, I will try and look into these things before the next release.

Cheers!

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, yes including asm code examples is something I have considered before and I have large amounts of code that I could include with the apps.

Part of the reason I haven't is that I don't want to deprive users of the pleasure of discovering how to do these things for themselves.

Writing code and finding good ways of doing things should be exciting and fun and educational, not just an exercise in copying and pasting somebody else's code.

As for your colour data problem, the "charset_attrib_L1" data IS the per-char colour data, the upper nybbles may also contain material data which you may or may not not need.

If you decompress the project so the charset contains 1000 chars (for a full-screen bitmap), then the charset data IS your bitmap data and the map data is not needed.

The chars just need loading/copying to your 8K bitmap and the L1 attribute data (1000 bytes) just needs to be loaded/copied to the colour matrix at $d800.

For a MC bitmap, the L2 attribute data (1000 bytes) will need to be loaded/copied to the screen matrix.

I hope that helps.

Hi

Yes there are lots of ways to move chars around such as using Cut, Copy, Paste, Swap, Reverse Order, Cycle Order.

The Paste function has 3 versions (insert, overwrite, append) depeding on how you want to do it.

You can swap any two characters by selecting one and then selecting another with CTRL held.

Have a look in the "Chars" menu when the Char Set form is active for all the options.

Hi, thank you for the positive words :)

Yes it was very much designed with ease of use and enjoyment in mind, especially regarding tile editing which has been a tedious chore in basically all tools until we made this.

Ok so your first suggestion is already handled by.. Import/Export.. Text/Asm.. Export Char Usage Statistics.

Your other ideas seem perfectly reasonable too, I have added them to the list.

Cheers!

Hi, 

Sorry you are experiencing problems, is the same problem present with all (.NET, W32, W64) versions?

So far I received 1 other bug report about the .NET version not starting, unsure which OS the user is on yet.

Hi,

You can "copy" a tile without decompressing but you will always need to decompress before you can paste it back in and even if it were possible to paste a tile to a compressed project you would still need to decompress before you could use the tile editor to actually (pixel) edit it.

(nb. copied tiles are always buffered in memory in a decompressed state).

These restrictions are in place for extremely good reason,  so if you want to do these things then you will have to change your methods to allow for the decompression to occur, ie. if you have "other characters" (non tile chars) in the set then try keeping them in a separate project and combining them at a later time to create the final set for your game level.

Hi,

Yes CharPad can already do this, just select all the chars you want to affect (or a single char) and hit CTRL+SHIFT+N, or choose Negative from the Char/Chars item in the menu.

Hi, thanks for supporting the projects, much appreciated!

Ok, animations in SpritePad are all based on ranges (ie. A to B) of items in the sprite or tile sheet.

nb. sprite animations and tile animations are handled by different forms.

You can select a range of images using the LEFT mouse button without (then with) the SHIFT key held down.

Then click "Create animation from selection" from the toolbar or menu (the sprite/tile sheet form must be active).

Alternatively you can just use the From/To controls on the animation form to set desired frames.

Playback speed etc etc are all handled by the animator form.

I hope that helps.

Thanks for the feedback, yes I can see how these things would be useful, the (ctm) project file format does get updated occasionally but I tend to wait until I have a good number of new ideas ready before designing/releasing a new one, this idea is  on the list now.

I will try and get the "big block of sub-maps" (binary export) into the next update.

It's been on the 'todo/maybe' list for many years but has hardly ever been asked about so I've never been quite sure if it's worth the effort.

What do C16/+4 developers currently use? just native 8-bit tools?

Hi, thanks for your suggestion,

Something like this (a sprite layer) has been on the todo/maybe  list for quite a while, the idea has just taken a back seat to the more char-related features (of which there is, and has been, an enormous amount to do).

I'm sure at some point there will be a merging between SpritePad and CharPad to turn the tool into more of a programmer's "level editor" than the tile-map editor that it currently is.

The idea is on the list!

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion.

While CharPad (Pro) *does* support custom palettes and includes a built-in palette editor where they can be created/saved/loaded and thereafter will draw all graphics using it, it will not currently display the tweaked palette in the Project window's colour selector, instead always showing the same (pre-drawn, c64) palette image(s).

I have made a note and will definitely look into it.

Hi frodewin, thanks for the bug report, yes you are quite right, there is a fault, it is present in the Win32 and Win64 builds of CharPad Pro 3.09.

The .NET build is unaffected.

I have just fixed it and will try and get a new version up tomorrow.

Hi, thanks for posting, the issue has been noted, I will investigate and try and get a fix into the next release.