Edification

a new Ferazel's Wand editor

I bet you never thought you'd see MASCOT for OS X. Well, you're right. Edification is better than MASCOT and it runs natively on OS X.

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The latest version is 1.0r7.
http://www.habnabit....n-1.0r7-ppc.dmg for PowerPC users.
http://www.habnabit....-1.0r7-i386.dmg for Intel users.
Edification will not run on OS 9, and requires at least Mac OS 10.3.9.

Changelog
1.0r6 -> 1.0r7
 * Added the sprite well.
 * Completely rewrote how Edification interacts with PyObjC to fix some 
   strange bugs which only showed up in ppc builds.
 * Now using fwstruct's new MacRoman codec!
 * Fixed a long-standing issue where sprites weren't moved when tilemaps were
   resized around them.
 * Changed my python toolchain to use macports instead of all home-built
   libraries and such.

1.0r5 -> 1.0r6
 * Added crunch tile edit mode.
 * Added wind tile edit mode.
 * Associated Ferazel's Wand world data with Edification.
 * Added an Open Recent menu.
 * Made an icon for Ferazel's Wand world data files.

1.0r4 -> 1.0r5
 * Fixed an extremely nasty bug with saving resources.
 * Made demon heads show where the other head will be.
 * Added a screenshot command.
 * Added a way to draw boxes in lightmaps.
 * Added the import and export commands.
 * Added the open command. (This is a lot harder than you'd expect, which is why it took so long to add. Stupid PyObjC.)
 * Removed the dependency on the Nav module, reducing the size of the binary.

1.0r3 -> 1.0r4
 * Now using the masks in the MASCOT Editor Graphics file.
 * Added rope rendering and editing.
 * Made area drawing smarter.
 * Added sprite list by ID.
 * Fixed the bug where clicking the dock icon would make Edification crash.

1.0r2 -> 1.0r3
 * Added Xichron editing mode.
 * Added the sign and levelstrings commands.
 * Made scenery flip like it would in Ferazel's Wand.

1.0r1 -> 1.0r2
 * Fixed a problem where findsprite would cause a fatal crash.
 * Changed from using reswalker to Carbon.Res.
 * Added dynamic tilemap resizing.
 * Included sprite list in disk image.
 * Added start position manipulation and display.

Here's a quick list of things you can do in Edification that you can't do in MASCOT:

  • Directly edit a level's lightmaps.

  • Hide the foreground/background/overlay/sprite layer.

  • Drag your mouse to draw walls.

  • Fill regions with FG tiles.

  • Fill regions with BG tiles, while respecting the FG boundary.

  • Quickly randomize BG tiles.

  • Change the size of your editing window.

  • Set the position of sprites.

  • Resize tilemaps.

  • Edit signs.

  • Generate a STR# 1000.

  • Quickly place Xichrons.

  • And much more.

It's still a work in progress, but it's pretty polished at this point. Discussion/feature requests can go in this thread.

(I previous accidentally deleted the table that should be in the screenshots when I was testing this app, whoops.)

edit: Thanks, spamguy, for putting this up in the essentials category!

This post has been edited by ferazel_09 : 18 March 2009 - 12:22 AM

:blink:

Me love you long time.

Ah, this is great! Can't wait to play around with this some! Good job! 🙂

Something about being able to drop in a "/resize 31 28" gives me an unexpected level of joy. I've wasted so much time chasing girls, only to find that what I've really wanted all along was fullscreen FW-editing capabilities.

oh, right, feature requests. Let's see you add pxMids, eh, eh?

This post has been edited by Thok : 22 January 2008 - 02:46 AM

Okay, much more seriously, I just remembered something MASCOT can't do, and is thus exactly the kind of thing Edification is meant for; editing the STR# resource for signs.

The syntax shouldn't be too tricky to figure out.
/str 16 "The sign reads, “Beware of high winds, all ye who enter Storm Valley!”"

Or for level names, something like this...
/str 1000 22 "The Labyrinth"
...though there's probably a better way to set that up than directly using the value.

@thok, on Jan 23 2008, 05:30 AM, said in Edification:

Okay, much more seriously, I just remembered something MASCOT can't do, and is thus exactly the kind of thing Edification is meant for; editing the STR# resource for signs.

The syntax shouldn't be too tricky to figure out.
/str 16 "The sign reads, “Beware of high winds, all ye who enter Storm Valley!”"

Or for level names, something like this...
/str 1000 22 "The Labyrinth"
...though there's probably a better way to set that up than directly using the value.

I'm thinking something like /levelstrings to dump out a STR# resource with all of the level names in it.
/sign ID sounds nice. It could be /sign ID to view it, and /sign ID whatever to set it.

Adding that now!

Is there a way to make it so editing the way backgrond (PxBg tiles?) is easier? I tried once in a test level and it was very tedious and difficult. If there was a way for the editor to just blanket the whole background onto the level whitout haveing to put in each individual tile, that would be great! It would also make making levels from scratch a breeze.

@two-jacks, on Jan 23 2008, 04:48 PM, said in Edification:

Is there a way to make it so editing the way backgrond (PxBg tiles?) is easier? I tried once in a test level and it was very tedious and difficult. If there was a way for the editor to just blanket the whole background onto the level whitout haveing to put in each individual tile, that would be great! It would also make making levels from scratch a breeze.

The tiles in the far-back are pxBack tiles.

Edification README said:

Here's things that will most likely never be added:

  • pxBack/pxMid editing

In one of the menus of MASCOT, though, there should be a "loop px tiles..." option.
If I recall correctly, pxBack rows 0 to 0 should be tiles 0-5, rows 1-1 tiles 6-11, rows 2-2 tiles 12-17, 3-3 tiles 18-23, 4-4 tiles 24-29, 5-5 30-35.
After that, stuff breaks, so it's best if you just adjust the speed enough that it'll cover the whole level, unless you don't mind repeating a bit.

Yeah, pxBacks are a little tricky, but fairly simple if you know what you're doing. Thok is right, though. Use the Loop px tiles... option in MASCOT to loop the pxBack tiles. I'm writing up a guide on how to do pxBacks as I've unlocked their deepest secrets when I was writing fwstructs.

Okay, Edification 1.0r3 is up. Xichron editing mode is really sexy.

CAN U HAX TEH GAME SO IT WORK IN OSX

IF NOT UR A LUSER LOL

KTHXBAI

I feel sad that I actually understood what spamguy said..

I asked ferazel_09 the same question, he replied saying that, (Losely quoted) "Yes it's possible to code python to make it so Ferazel could run in OSX but it would be to long and difficult.". I guess if maybe ASW wanted they could get a team of code monkeys together to make a python base for Ferazel, don't count on it.

On a side note: Wow, there are six topics still active in the Ferazel Hacking boards. Impressive.

This post has been edited by Two Jacks : 27 January 2008 - 11:01 PM

Aaand now Edification 1.0r5 is released. You should upgrade as soon as possible, because pre-r5 versions have some pretty nasty bugs with saving resources. This is because of strange, undocumented "features" of the Resource Manager.

I don't want to keep spamming this thread, but I suppose it is helpful if I post a reply whenever I post a new version. So.

1.0r6 is up, now with crunch tile and wind tile editing modes!

It helps me if you post everytime you update.

As for an idea:
1)You click/enter a command and an interface appears displaying a minimap of the current level your editing. By clicking spots on the mini map you add xichrons, torches, rock piles, enimies. The interace might be weird, you might have to enter a command to open up different editing tools. This would mainly be for speed editing, though uploading a pict file would likely be easyer.

2)Menus?

@two-jacks, on Feb 6 2008, 09:34 PM, said in Edification:

1)You click/enter a command and an interface appears displaying a minimap of the current level your editing. By clicking spots on the mini map you add xichrons, torches, rock piles, enimies. The interace might be weird, you might have to enter a command to open up different editing tools. This would mainly be for speed editing, though uploading a pict file would likely be easyer.

This would be a little hard to not very much benefit, really. There already is a way to quickly place xichrons.

I just envisioned a mode where you could more quickly place sprites of a certain type, though. Count on a way to more quickly place sprites in r7.

@two-jacks, on Feb 6 2008, 09:34 PM, said in Edification:

2)Menus?

Just posted an update to 1.0r6 with some menus.

o hay.

There's a new version of Edification posted. I doubt that anybody cares at this point, but the new version is totally awesome and better than ever.