tokumaru wrote:
From what I've heard so far, you do plan to include a decent set of features in your editor, and I honestly hope it can be useful to many people.
If possible, yes, I would like to include as much as I can (if I can find the time). But first, I need to create a very minimalist version (map/metatile support only) for the first alpha that can generate data and see how well it can be integrated on the nes. Then if it goes well I can continue to add features.
tokumaru wrote:
The problem is that when you look at commercial NES games, you see all sorts of crazy map formats, and they are crazy because of hardware constraints. SMB has a pretty weird map format because it needs to be very compact. Sacrifices were made, sacrifices that wouldn't affect the kind of gameplay they were aiming for. The deal with generic tools is that they can't take those sacrifices into consideration, nor the type of gameplay you want to achieve. They must be generic enough to cover a wide range of situations, and there will always be some you'd rather leave out of your project because you'd gain something from it, be it speed, ROM or RAM space, whatever. This is why most serious projects need custom tools.
I see your point but the need I'm trying to fill is the lack of a visual editor for your map/metatile etc. editing needs. There is none where I can easily generate some generic data that I can parse easily. Of course there exist some tile editor but I never found one that is appropriate for the nes. So my first goal is to create the "view" of that editor, something generic to create what will be seen on the screen. Then, regarding the data format, depending of your need, a generic version will be generated and you will require some post processing because every person engine needs are different. If we can create that visual editor, that will already be a big plus. The data exported could be in .db format or xml, or even a plug-in interface could allow the user to create is own format.
Regarding the metatile, you will be able to define your own attributes for your metatile set. Then on every metatile, you can select which one is appropriate. So the editor won't have a default list of attribute, you have to define them.
tokumaru wrote:
I make my own tools when I need to handle complex data formats, but they are usually simple command line applications without any sort of error handling. Maybe they are more like scripts than applications. It's indeed not convenient having to take a break from your game to program something else, but sometimes there is no other way to prepare your data.
Small scripts are always useful for specific needs. In the case mentioned above, you could create a small script to generate the more complex data format.
Without straying too much off topic, you will need to create some of your tools (editor, scripts etc) for your own needs. If you can use an existing tool and convert the data to your specific format, you will be able to save some time.