Right on, Althocreft. Meanwhile...

I've just encountered quite a curious bug: I have a map consisting of 14 100x100 layers. Its a new map made with maped3 and hence doesn't have an entities layer. It still loads, mind you, but what's very strange is that some of the layers aren't rendering. I ran a test and layers 5,6,7,8 and 9 appear off in the game but are fine in the editor. I'm not running any code to affect them so I'm assuming this is a bug that got missed since no-one's usiong this many layers.

The renderstring reads: 1,3,2,14,12,5,13,4,8,10,7,6,11,9,R. The individual layers are as follows:

1: The floor
3: The floor overlay
2: The walls
14: Wall overlay 1
12: Wall overlay 2
5: Doors
--------- Entity layer would go here
13: Walk-behinds 1
4: Walk-behinds 2
8: Semi-transparent windows
10: Fading layer 1
7: Fading layer 2
6: Fading layer 3
11: Fading shadows
9: Trees

The idea I'm working on is that when the player enters a house, the roof fades out to allow you to see inside rather than cutting to a seperate interior. I can't abide tiny houses with disproportionate interiors. The "fading" layers are the ones that fade away.

Below are the comparative images. The top one is maped3 with the fading layers turned off, the second is maped 3 with the fading layers turned on and the bottom one is what v3 renders in-game. Hopefully, this is enough info to help get this particularly annoying bug squashed.

Since the release of the latest Maped3 the animate bug seems to have got worse. Turning animations on just once locks it up every time now on my Windows 98 system. Also, I can't see if anyone else has already said this, but the obstruction, entity, and zone layers are the only ones to appear transparent in Maped.

And a suggestion for a future version: the ability to move around the map using the arrow keys like in Maped2, and/or mousewheel support for the same. Currently the only area of Maped that the mousewheel will move for me is the layer box.

EDIT: Damn. On rebooting (my computer had been running since before I downloaded the new version of Maped3) the animate bug seems to have disappeared completely!
Also, I can't remember if this was the case before, but I've just noticed that animations are only animated if the FIRST frame in the sequence is the one placed on the map. I'm sure I would have noticed this before if it had been happening then...
And what is the third mouse button supposed to do? Sometimes holding it down lets you scroll around the map, and sometimes it draws blank tiles. This has probably already been covered somewhere, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

This is a bug concerning the importing of tiles into your vsp. Once you've imported an image into your vsp somehow, you can't ever import anything else beyond what you've already imported.


************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at winmaped2.Vsp24.GetTiles(Image img, Int32 gridsize)
at winmaped2.MainWindow.doimport(Boolean repeat)
at winmaped2.MainWindow.miImportAgain_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.MenuItemData.Execute()
at System.Windows.Forms.Command.Invoke()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmCommand(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

Hope this helps you.

--Reed

There's a bug when maped shows the renderstring. Maped lists the renderstring as 1,2,3,4,5... etc. VERGE, however, starts its layers count at layer "0," ie what Maped calls layer 1 on the rendersting is in fact 0 to v3. As a result, each layer is numbered -1 of what maped is telling you it is. Bizarrely, the layers default titles in the list box you manipulate them in are the RIGHT numbers.

A few more Maped suggestions:

+ There doesn't seem to be the option to change the tileset a map uses in Maped. We should have one.
+ When TileEd gets done, can we have colours adjustable as HSL values as well as RGB? Fiddling with a colours hue, saturation and lightness is very useful indeed.
+ An eye-dropper tool for TileEd is essential.
+ The option to export a tileset without the single-pixel padding would also come in handy, especially if you work without the padding and accidentally trash the original.
+ If Maped doesn't find the help file, it will crash. A friendly warning is required to inform the user to stop buggering about with Maped's files.
+ At last, can we FINALLY view CHRs in maped as they're meant to be seen in-game? An option could be implemented to toggle between their CHR image and the standard yellow box with a number in it

Alright, since I can't go any res above 800x600, do you think you can make popup windows for the mini-map, and render options? You could make it possible to open the windows through the View menu or something. I've pointed out this issue I have before, but I figure this solution sounds better than the one I suggested previously (ie. scroll bars).

overkill, that's certainly a possibility. It's just something I have to work out with the .net framework. It's difficult to get an OnTop window thats not OnTop of other apps, for some reason. It takes weird voodoo.

Uhh I don't see the need for sliders next to the numbers?? You just need to move the hue slider vertically and the sat/lum x/y control on the left. Alter the RGB without going into the dialog.

Hmm that's a possibility. But don't expect it any time soon. And I disagree. PS's HSL picker is better because it doesnt have an annoying circular hue picker (yes i know its measured in degrees), and the area that shows the L/S is very big and thus very precise.

Another suggestion - It's rather difficult to differentiate 16x16 tiles on a 1024x768 hires screen. God help anyone who runs at a higher res.

Be very very nice if you could scale the size of the tiles in the tile picker.