Amiga Elysian Archive/AmigaElysianArchive.iso/games/utils/alia101.lha/doc-english

Text File | 1993-05-29 | 14KB | 396 lines

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                    A l i a - M a p  V1.0, 28 May 1993

        A powerful tool for video games and graphical developers

                             Documentation

                             by Yves Schmid

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         TABLE OF CONTENTS:

         I)    Introduction
         II)   Acknowledgements
         III)  Features
         IV)   Tutorial
         IV)   Useful definitions
         V)    Project structure
         VI)   Project creation
         VII)  Global map creation
         VIII) GFX map creation
         IX)   Tiles creation
         X)    Global map edition
         XI)   Palettes
         XII)  Copy, cut, etc...
         XIII) Other fonctions
         XIV)  Last help
         XV)   Future features


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I) Introduction

Alia-Map is a shareware. It means that if you use it you must pay it. This
version is freely distribuable, but saving has been disabled.

The first good news about the version 1.01 is his price:
It is fixed now to $40.- (or better 60.- Swiss Fr.).
I reduced the price to allow non-commercial developers to buy AliaMap.
Most of them want to use a program like AliaMap and ask me for a
price reduction. Now it is done.

For this price you will receive:
Alia-Map complete version, codes to import Alia-Map files into your program, and
information on the file format.

Contact me:

Letter  : Yves Schmid, Rue de la Faucille 2, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland.
Phone   :  ++ 41 22 733 31 15
E-mail  : ADSP, [e-mail]


NOTE:
In your order please indicate if you want a version for 68020, 30, etc...,
if you want a french version. To avoid any hacking your name will be
coded in the executable of Alia-Map.


***********************
**** Version 1.01 *****
***********************

Bugs corrected:

* "New global map" crashed when there was no memory left.

* AliaMap had some problems under kickstart 39.106
  with the choice of the right display mode when loading a project.

* Default palette crashed if the screen had more than
  eight planes (>256 colours).

* The image editor crashed when there was no memory left.

* AliaMap did not update the palette under some special conditions.

* The image editor did not display the palette under some special
  conditions.

* AliaMap loosed 1 byte every time you clicked on "cancel" in the
  "new gfxmap" requester.

* The file requester made some "enforcer hit".


New features:

* Maximum global maps size is 99'999 x 99'999 (old size was 999 x 999).

* Gfx map display is ~2x faster.

* Tile display is ~2x faster.

* Global maps display modifies the palette in order to have more realistic
  reduction.


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II) Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Pascale for her help in translating the
french documentation in english.
Thanks to David Bianchi who's the first to buy AliaMap and who helped me
to find some bugs.
Thanks to Mark Somogyi.

Thanks to Chris Green for his suggestions.

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III)  Features

Alia-Map is a tilemap editor using the features of the new AGA
chips. Alia-Map gives a solution and a saving of time for video games
development.


* What is Alia-Map?

Most of the actual games use combination of small graphics to do bigger
decor. This technique is applied to the greater part of the 2D video games.
Alia-Map is used during the decor construction of the games.
Easy to use, flexible, this editor can swiftly and intuitively create tilemap.
Most of the graphical part of the game can be designed by a
graphic artist or a scenarist without any programmer intervention.


* Alia-Map is flexible.

Alia-Map works in all graphical resolution and uses the OS 3.0 standard.
You can create tilemap in any size, which uses graphics of variable size.


* Alia-Map is powerful.

You load your IFF image, Alia-Map automatically analyse and dissect
the picture. A drawing integrated editor allows you to modify
your work without quitting Alia-Map.

After having your images integrated, you can use Alia-Map like
a drawing program. You choose an image which you can draw with in
the tilemap.

Tilemaps have two combinations levels: you can create tilemaps and
putting them together, you get bigger maps. This feature allows you
to draw vast maps which uses few memory.


* Alia-Map works on any Amiga.

Although Alia-Map is AGA oriented, it can be used on any Amiga which
has at least the OS3.0.
It  can be used to create games for Amiga 500 if you do not use AGA
features.


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IV) Tutorial

A small demo is in this archive. It will show how Alia-Map works.

Run Alia-Map. Select "open" in the menu "project" and click on
the file called "map-demo".

The screen title have the name of the actual project. Alia-Map is
a multi-project program. It means that if you load another
project, you will have two project in the memory. To close a project
select "close" in the menu "project". To show a project, select
"show" in the menu "project".

Now select "show" in the menu "global". A requester opens. Select
the entry called "demoglob".

The screen title has changed, it shows your position in the
project. An image is slowly to be displayed. This picture is a combination
of different tilemaps. This is only a reduction. The display is
not very fast, but you have not to wait until the picture is entirely
displayed. You can simultaneously go on with your work..

Don't wait, and go to the menu called "GFX" and select "show". A new
requester will open. Select "gfxmap1".

The screen is divided in two sections: at left you can see tilemaps that I
called "GFX maps". At right you can see the patterns which have been used
to construct the GFX map. This patterns are called "tiles" in AliaMap.
Most of the time, the GFX map will be bigger than the screen, you
can use proportional gadgets to move the display.

Click on a tile in the right zone of the screen. You have selected a tile.
Now go on the GFX map with the mouse and click on. You have drawn a tile
into the GFX map. If you select others tiles, you can modify the GFX map
the way you want.


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IV) Useful definitions

It is important to understand what is what in Alia-Map:

* Tiles: It is small pictures (bitmaps). The combination of these pictures
         forms a bigger image. You can import or draw these images.

* GFX map: It's a combination of tiles (the tilemap).

* Global map: It's a combination of GFX maps. Most of the time you will not
              use global map. But they can be very useful when you want to do
              very big maps.


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V) Project structure

A basic project has:

   _ Tiles
   _ One or several Global maps which have one or several GFX maps.
   _ Palettes which are linked to tiles

A graphic representation is:

   -------------------------------------------
   | Project                                 |
   -------------------------------------------
   |                             |
   |                             |
   |                             |
   ---------------------         ---------------------
   | Tiles             |         | Global maps       |
   ---------------------         ---------------------
   |                             |
   ---------------------         ---------------------
   | Palettes          |         | GFX maps          |
   ---------------------         ---------------------


Each project can have more than one global map, and each global map
can have a lot of GFX maps.


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VI) Project creation

Select "new" in the menu "project". A requester opens. Give a name
to your projet. This name will be useful when you will have more than one
project loaded.

To choose another screen resolution, click on "Display mode".

Then, you can specify the size of tiles for this project. This size
is a multiple of 16. If you set 2x2, you will have tiles of 32x32 pixels.
In this version the size is limited to 9 (9x16 = 144x144 pixels).

Now you can create tiles or Global map.


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VII) Global map creation

Select "new" in the menu "global". Give a name to the global map.

You can set the width and height of the map. These two variables can
be changed at any time after that the global map has been created.

Now you must set the size of the GFX maps's global map. This two variables
can not be changed after the creation of the global map. They will be
used for every GFX map which will be linked with this global map.


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VIII) GFX map creation

To create a GFX map you must have at least a Global map created and shown.
Then you can select "new" in the menu "GFX". This GFX map will be linked
to the global map showed.


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IX) Tiles creation

There is two to possibilities

   * You can import tiles.
     Select "load" in the menu "tile" and select an IFF picture.

   * You can draw tiles.
     Select "draw" in the menu "tile". You will see the integrated
     drawing editor. Draw your picture and close the window.

When you have your picture, the program must dissect it in tiles.
Alia-Map does the work for you. A screen will be open and you can
see the cutout. The screen can be bigger than the display, in this
case you must use the mouse pointer to scroll it. If you see
black border at the left of the screen, it's not a bug but a
monitor problem. Remove the "VGAOnly" from "SYS:devs/monitor" and
reboot.
The cutout offset can be changed with the proportional gadgets. If
you don't want some tiles, click on it. All the tiles which have
only one colour are deselected by Alia-Map.


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X) Global map edition

To edit global maps, simply click on the position you want. A requester
will open. You can choose the GFX map that you want to drop at this
position. To edit global map you have to wait that the display is
fully constructed. This is the only fonction you can not do when
the picture is displaying. Menus, gadgets, etc... can be used when
Alia-Map is working to display the picture.

The global map display is very slow, this will be optimized in a next
version.


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XI) Palettes

The palette managing is 100% intern. The user does not have to think about it.
Alia-Map has a table of palettes for each project. When you
create new tiles, Alia-Map looks for it in its table to see if the tiles
palette is not here yet. If Alia-Map don't have the palette, this one
is added in the table. Alia-Map knows which palette must be used
for all the tiles in a project.
When you edit a GFX-Map, Alia-Map shows the palette of the selected tile.
For visual reasons, the first 4 colours are never changed. If you want
to see the entire palette you must change "Partial palette" in the menu
"tiles" under "palette".

Alia-Map can use more than one palette in a same GFX carte. This can be
very useful to create big picture which changes colours when we are moving
in it.


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XII) Copy, cut, etc...

Alia-Map has a standard edition menu. Edition works only on GFX maps.
You can copy, cut, paste, in a same map, from a map to another map, from
a project to another project. If you copy from a project to another project,
and if the two projects do not have the same tiles, Alia-Map will use
the tiles order of the two projects.

To copy, cut, or erase, select the fonction in the menu "edition", click
where the block must start, go where you want to place the end of the block, and
reclick.
To paste, select the fonction in the menu "edition" and click where
the block must be pasted.

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XIII) Other fonctions

For each data type, there is a delete fonction. You can use it to kill
tiles, GFX maps, etc...

There is a rename fonction too. You can rename most of the data type.


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XIV) Last help

If you do not all understand do not worry. This program is not very
simple, but you need a little practice.
The user interface is very intuitive, and the best you can do is
runnig the program and test it.
It's important to understand each data type.
Read the chapter "IV) Useful definitions", and examine the result in
Alia-Map.

Good luck!


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XIV) Future features

Alia-Map can be useful for every games developers, demo coders, or
eventually in graphical applications.
Future features will depend of you, if you like this program and
if you use it, I will develop new public version. I think that this tool can
help many developers to do AGA games, and can speed up the creation on
the new amiga generation...

Some ideas are:

   _ An ARexx port
   _ A method to create tiles objects, and use them to draw in GFX maps.
   _ Animations in GFX maps.
   _ Tools to manage palettes.
   _ Data types extensible with user datas.
   _ IFF format for files.
   _ A dataclass to show and to scroll maps.
   _ Functions to modify definitions (like sizes) of data types like GFX maps or
     tiles.