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Text File | 1992-04-17 | 12KB | 241 lines

Tile Maker Utility For use with Mah Jongg or Tile Match Nels Anderson 92 Bishop Drive Framingham, MA 01701-6515 U.S.A. USING TILEMAKER: The Tile Maker utility allows you to make your own sets of tiles or modify sets made by others. The utility is similar to many paint programs with which you might be familiar, though because of its specialized nature it includes less functions. Tile Maker can be controlled with your mouse or keyboard and requires EGA or VGA graphics. How tiles are stored on disk: First, some basics about working with tile sets. A Mah Jongg tile set includes 42 different tiles. Eight of them are in the "wild card" suits (normally the flowers and seasons suits) where any tile in the suit matches any other. The other 34 tiles use the standard matching rule where there are four of each tile on the board and the tiles must be matched exactly to be removed. You'll want to keep the game rules in mind when designing your tiles. All 42 tiles are stored in a single disk file. You'll need to know how the tiles are numbered so that you store your new tiles in the proper place. For reference, the standard tile set (mahjongg.til) is numbered as follows: Tiles 1 - 9: suit of dots Tile 10: white dragon Tiles 11 - 19: suit of bamboo Tile 20: green dragon Tiles 21 - 29: suit of characters Tile 30: red dragon Tiles 31 - 34: suit of winds Tiles 35 - 38: suit of seasons Tiles 39 - 42: suit of flowers Getting Started: Start up tilemakr.exe by typing "tilemakr" on the command line; there are no command line options. Note the drawing area on the left and the command area on the right. If you're using a mouse you can just point to a command and click; if you're using the keyboard use the letter next to the command. Most of the commands are self-explanatory. Reading a tile file will first show you all tiles in the file and then allow you to select by number the tile you want. When saving a file you'll need to remember the numbered position in the file that you want to save it to. The number of the last tile read in is displayed in the lower right corner of the screen. After you've loaded a file once you can use the "re-read" command to get a new tile without waiting for disk access. You can also review the complete set of current tiles using the "view last images" command. The full tile set is always kept in memory to let you access it. This screen is updated by the save command so the current tile set as stored on disk is always accurately displayed. Drawing: Normal drawing can be done with the keyboard or mouse. Using the mouse, select the desired color by pointing at the color chart and clicking. Then to draw just point at the drawing area and click on each spot where you want to draw. Because it's common to switch back and forth between two colors, Tile Maker remembers the last color you've selected as well as the current one. Use the right mouse button at any time to toggle back and forth between the current and previous drawing color. If you're drawing with a mouse there are a few basic drawing shapes available in addition to the simple dot. Under the drawing area is a set of push buttons where you can select dots, line, circle, rectangle, filled circle or box. Click on the desired button and you'll see it push in to confirm proper selection. When using the line or rectangles, move the mouse cursor to one end (corner) and hold down the mouse button. Then move to the other end (corner) and release the button. When using the circles you start in the center and pull away until the circle is the desired size. You can pull in any direction since the circle is symmetrical. The seventh (rightmost) drawing tool is a special one. It allows you to outline an area and then change all pixels within that area that are a specific color into a different color. Select this tool and then outline a rectangle just as you would with the rectangle drawing tool. When the area you want is outlined, release the mouse button. You'll be prompted to select the color you want to change; point anywhere you want on the screen and click when pointing to the desired color. Then you'll be prompted for the color you want to change to; again you can point anywhere on the screen and click. Now the selected color will change. When within the drawing area, the mouse cursor snaps to the center of each pixel when moving around or drawing dots, lines or rectangles. If you prefer that the cursor move smoothly you can turn off the snap function by clicking on the "snap Cursor on/off" command on the right hand of the screen. For most drawing you'll probably find the snap cursor useful as you'll be able to more clearly tell what pixel is being pointed to. Drawing with the keyboard requires typing the letter or number of the desired color, then moving the cursor around with the arrow keys and finally hitting space when you want to draw a dot. Enhanced Undo Function: Because quite often you will do something that you wish you hadn't, Tile Maker has an undo function. Tile Maker actually saves up to three previous versions of the tile you're working on, and these appear directly below the current normal sized tile in the box on the left side of the screen. If you select the undo function by clicking on "Undo" or hitting the U key you'll get the backup tile shown immediately below the tile in the box. If you're working with a mouse you can select any of the three backup tiles directly simply by clicking on the one you want. Additional Drawing Functions: The "fill" command works a bit differently from paint programs, because it only fills up from the starting point. This is handy at times because you don't have to close off the bottom of the area you're going to fill. If you have a very irregularly shaped area you may have to use fill more than once to fill it all. Note that fill works from the position of the keyboard cursor, not from where the mouse points. The "flip", "rotate" and "shift" functions all work with only the face of the tile. They also force a one pixel border around the edge of the tile surface, so you'll want to be careful not to shift things past this border (unless that's what you want to do!). When you're done with your tile set, use the "N" (add Name) function. The name you enter will be displayed at the bottom of the screen when playing Mah Jongg or in the Info screen when playing Tile Match. The best thing to do is get the Tile Maker running and experiment. You'll find designing good tiles is quite a challenge, but it will allow you to have your own personalized version of the game when you're done. You might want to look at other already completed tile sets to see some of the techniques used. Because the drawing area is so small you often have to trick the eye to get the effect you want. One thing to avoid is changing the sloping sides of the tiles. Generally this will ruin the 3D effect and simply doesn't look good when tiles are stacked up. Importing From PCX Pictures: Tile Maker has a limited ability to load tile faces from PCX drawings, such as you might create with a full- featured paint program or with a scanner. The PCX pictures must be in 640x350 pixel size and use a 16 color EGA palette. To import a PCX picture, click on "import PCX picture" or hit the P key. The normal file selection box will pop and and you should select the PCX file you want. The picture will load and a square cursor will appear. Use the cursor to surround the portion of the picture you want (the square is exactly the size of a tile face) and click. You'll be switched back to the editing screen with the PCX image now on the tile face. Saving Your Tiles: Saving a tile seems to be a bit tricky for some people, so let's go over it thoroughly. When the first tile in your new tile set is complete, use the "Save tile" function (hit the S key or click on "Save tile"). A file selection box will pop up, but since you're creating a new tile set you should type in a file name rather than selecting an existing one. You can leave off the ".til" portion of the name if you wish, so for an example, FLAGS.TIL or FLAGS would both be valid and refer to the same file. Hit the 'Enter' key or click on the OK box when ready. Now, you'll be prompted for a tile number within the set (see the section above on how the tiles are numbered). Since this is your first tile, you'll probably want to enter 1 but any number between 1 and 42 is valid. Once you've selected a tile number and hit the 'Enter' key, your first tile is saved! On subsequent tiles, the procedure is essentially the same. When the tile is done, select the "Save tile" function again and the file selection box will pop up again. Since your tile set has already been started, just click on it to select it this time. When prompted for a tile number, enter a number you haven't already used, otherwise you'll wipe out one of your other tiles. Just keep going until you have all 42 tiles created. Don't forget at some point during your tile set creation to use the "add Name to file" function" (click on it, or use the "N" key) to add your name or a description to the tile set. The message you enter will be displayed at the bottom of the screen when playing Mah Jongg or in the Info screen when playing Tile Match. Share Your Creations! If you develop any tile sets you'd like to share please upload them to the support BBS (Xevious: 508-875-3618) or mail them to the author on a diskette. I'd suggest that you include a text file describing your tile set and of course you should include your name in it. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!