PlayMapper WIP V1 18/9 - Devlog - Final Tweaks

PlayMAPPER Classic V1.18/9 is another pass at bringing the classic map editor up to date with the current PlayBASIC environment. This update is largely focused on usability and refinement rather than adding a huge collection of new features. The block palette is now resizable, making it much more practical when working with tilesets arranged in different layouts. The screen-mode dialog has also been updated with a selection of common presets as well as a custom resolution option. The editor's cut-and-paste selection has been updated, allowing map regions to be copied and pasted as temporary brushes, while the existing brush and undo systems remain in place. There's also been a collection of smaller GUI improvements, including new custom anti-aliased controls, direction arrows and a transparency indicator. These graphics are generated by the GUI library itself rather than relying on text characters. The video also takes a look at some of the ideas that could make PlayMAPPER more useful as part of a game-development workflow — including entity placement, spawn points, trigger layers and using additional map layers to describe things such as player starts, pickups and other game events. Later on, I dig into some of the code behind the GUI changes, including the pixel filtering used to create the anti-aliased controls, drawing icons from geometric shapes, surface pixel access, and some of the limitations of the older GUI code. There are also a few thoughts on possible future improvements to the editor and GUI system, including better level navigation, more flexible control storage and cleaning up some of the older global state. Overall, V1.18 is about bringing PlayMAPPER Classic a little closer to the current PlayBASIC experience. It's not intended to turn the classic editor into a completely new application — just to make the existing tool more usable, consistent and practical. Chapters 00:00 — Welcome back to PlayMAPPER Classic 00:10 — What changed since the previous version 00:37 — PlayMAPPER gets a new logo 00:43 — Resizable block palette 00:56 — Matching the palette to the tileset layout 01:23 — New screen resolution presets 01:44 — The joys of working with old GUI code 02:15 — Why the resizable palette matters 02:36 — Working with the Xenon 2000 tileset 03:10 — Drawing tiles with the new palette layout 03:51 — More GUI visual improvements 04:20 — Custom anti-aliased controls 04:29 — The new transparency cross 05:08 — Updated map selection and cut & paste 05:39 — Copying and pasting map sections 06:18 — Keeping the classic editor practical 07:01 — Possible future map-editing tools 08:05 — Entity placement and game-development workflow 09:00 — Loading entity data into the game 10:07 — Using additional map layers for game data 10:56 — Creating a spawn-point layer 12:00 — Using invisible layers as trigger points 12:50 — Combining map and entity data 13:30 — Importing maps and moving through tiles 14:11 — Map limits and the legacy rendering system 15:10 — Final visual polish and real-world testing 16:18 — Why software needs real-world testing 16:46 — Ideas for using multiple map layers 17:35 — Different tile resolutions in the same world 18:47 — Turning PlayBASIC features into a cohesive workflow 19:17 — Wrapping up the PlayMAPPER update 20:48 — Looking at the PlayMAPPER code 22:00 — Cleaning up old GUI code 23:30 — The pixel filtering used for GUI graphics 24:38 — Drawing the custom direction arrows 25:47 — Preserving GUI rendering state 26:59 — Building the arrow graphics 28:05 — Reading and filtering surface pixels 29:30 — Weighted alpha filtering 30:37 — Drawing the radio-button graphics 31:53 — Pixel-based circle falloff 32:32 — Drawing the transparency cross 33:19 — Finding the nearest point on a line 33:42 — Filtering the cross for rounded edges 34:45 — Final thoughts on V1.18 35:34 — Limitations in the old GUI controls 36:34 — Dynamic storage vs fixed control limits 37:12 — How the undo system stores data 38:01 — Building a more flexible text cache 39:57 — Cleaning up GUI global state 41:22 — Final thoughts and thanks for watching PlayMAPPER WIP BLOGS https://www.underwaredesign.com/forum... PlayBASIC programming language https://PlayBASIC.com #2d #map #editor #retro #game #retrodev #gamedev #coding #makegames #gamemaker