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Text File | 1994-11-13 | 23KB | 464 lines

Tile Factory Version 1.0 November 14, 1994 Nels Anderson 585 Edmands Road Framingham, MA 01701-3088 U.S.A. USING TILE FACTORY The Tile Factory utility allows you to make your own sets of tiles or modify sets made by others. These tiles can be used with my solitaire game Second Guess. You can recognize tile sets by the file extension .TL (for example, GUESS.TL). Please note that these are not compatible with my earlier EGA tile games and the tiles from those games are not compatible with the SVGA games though they can be loaded, edited and saved in the new format using Tile Factory. 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 Factory requires a mouse and SuperVGA graphics (640x480, 256 colors). The best thing to do is get Tile Factory 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. 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 for compatibility with future games. Second Guess only needs 36 tiles. Tiles 1 through 34 are used plus tiles 35 and 39. 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 Mah Jongg tile set 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 "FACTORY.EXE" by typing "factory" on the command line. There are no command line options, but you can include the name of a tile set file on the command line and that tile set will be immediately loaded once Tile Factory starts up. Note the drawing area on the left and the tile set display on the right. If you did not include a tile set name on the command line the tile set displayed will be blank, but as soon as you read in a tile set it will be shown. Along the top of the screen are a series of menus you can select. If you're using a mouse you just need to point to the word you want and click. If using the keyboard you can use the functions keys (each menu is numbered sequentially so Help is F1, Info is F2, etc.). You can also select menus by holding down the Alt key while also hitting the first letter of the menu name; for example, you'd hit Alt-F to open the File menu. DRAWING Normal drawing (single dot at a time) 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 Factory 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. 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 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. The eighth function is fill. Using this function you can fill in an area of any shape with the currently selected color. When you select fill the cursor will change to the word "FILL" with a little target to the upper left. Position the target in the area you want filled and click to fill. Using the keyboard you can fill by moving the keyboard cursor within the area to be filled and hitting the Z key. Fill can also use a range of colors instead of just a single color. Instead of left clicking, click the center button (or both buttons if you have a two button mouse). You'll be prompted for a range of colors similar to the shade function and the area will be filled with randomly selected colors from the range you chose. The ninth function is text entry. Because of the small size of the tiles only two simple fonts are used. The smaller font is 5 pixels high and the larger one is 7 pixels high. Several different widths are available and Tile Factory will try to use the widest characters possible given the space available. Depending on whether you have border set on or off (from the Text menu) the letters may go right to the edge of the tile face or a one pixel border will be enforced. To enter text, position the mouse to the upper left corner of where the text should start (if using the keyboard, use the arrow keys to position the keyboard cursor and then hit the L key). You'll then be prompted to enter the text you want. Lower case letters are not available but capital letters and most other characters can be used. If the text you enter is too much to fit in the available space you'll be told how many pixels too wide it is and you can then adjust accordingly. 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 using Snap Cursor on/off under the Options menu. 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. Some people find using the keyboard useful for some drawing situations. To draw with the keyboard move the cursor around with the arrow keys and hit space when you want to draw a dot. If you hold down the space bar a line of dots will be drawn in the direction of the last arrow key used. When drawing the position of the mouse cursor is shown just below the color selection area. If you wish to see the position of the keyboard cursor instead, just move the mouse cursor outside the drawing area and move the keyboard cursor with the arrow keys. COLORS A color bar is shown in the middle of the screen. To select a color just move the mouse over it and click. Only 32 colors are shown at a time out of the 256 colors available. The remaining colors can be shown by clicking on the arrows at the top and bottom of the color bar. When you select a color its number is displayed at the bottom of the color bar. Because some colors are so similar it's often easier to reference the number than to try to recognize a color by appearance. In addition, the color and its composition is shown below the drawing. Each color is made up of a combination of red, green and blue and its makeup is shown here. Each color can have brightness values of 0 through 63. By clicking on the arrows over and under the individual colors you can change their values. Remember, though, that when you do this you change every place that color is used in your tile set. You will see the change take place immediately. Any changes you make to the color palette will be saved with the tile set the next time you save a tile. Colors numbered 0 through 23 cannot be changed as they are used for game menus, etc. Color 16 is special; it is used for the "see through" corners of the tiles. You should avoid using colors 16 through 23. MENUS Many functions have keyboard shortcuts that are shown in parentheses after the name of the function. You can use these keys to access functions directly without going through the menus. A list of all keyboard shortcuts is at the end of this document. If using a mouse you just point to the function you want and click. If using the keyboard you can select menus using the function keys or the Alt key plus the first letter of the menu name. Within the menus you can select functions by number or by using the arrow keys to move to the function you want and the Enter key to select it. Most of the functions available from the menu are pretty self-explanatory, but let's cover each menu and function in detail. HELP Under the help function is an abbreviated set of instructions for using Tile Factory. To move from one help screen to another click on the Next or Prev (previous) box. To quit help click on the Quit box. You can also use the letters shown in red for next, quit or previous. FILE MENU This is the menu used for disk access. The first choice allows you to clear any current drawing and start a new tile. You'll be prompted to make sure you mean to do this. Save Tile allows you to save your work into a tile set file. You'll first be prompted for the name of the file that your tile should become part of. If you are creating a new tile set you must type in the file name otherwise you can just click on the file name in the list. If the file you choose is different from the last one you read in, the new file will be read in and displayed on the right side of the screen; if creating a brand new set the right side of the screen will be blank. Finally, you must choose what position your tile will take. If you're editing an existing tile and just want to put it back in the same position you just need to click on OK. Otherwise you can either enter the new position number from the keyboard or you can point and click on the tile on the right side of the screen you wish to replace. Read Tile Set allows you to read tiles from the disk. The entire tile set is always loaded and displayed on the right side of the screen. If the set does not contain all 42 tiles blanks will be shown at some positions. The Load Tile function is only needed if you don't have a mouse. It allows you to transfer a single tile from the tile set shown on the right side of the screen into the editor. When prompted enter either the number of the tile you want to edit or hit the Esc key to abort. Import .PCX Picture gives you the ability to load tile faces from PCX drawings, such as you might create with a full-featured paint program or with a scanner. Note that this feature may not work with all .PCX files. It may be helpful to convert non-standard images to 640x480, 256 color images with an external utility before attempting to load them into Tile Factory. Tile Factory gives you three options on how the color palette is used when importing a .PCX picture. If adding the image to an existing tile set you should choose "Current palette" as this will prevent your existing tiles from changing colors. This choice may cause the picture to not look right, though, as its colors will have to be changed to match those available in the current palette. If starting a new tile set you should choose "Palette from picture". This will load the picture in its original colors and change the current color palette to match. The third choice is a combination of the first two. Choosing "Combined palette" prevents any of your current tiles from changing colors while using as many of the original colors as possible from the imported picture. This will result in changes to your current palette, but only to colors that had not been used in any tiles. When you select import .PCX picture, the normal file selection box will pop up 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. If you're using the keyboard you can use the arrow keys to move the cursor around and the Enter key to select. Hit Esc to abort. When you're done with your tile set, use the add name function. The name you enter will be displayed in the Info screen when playing Second Guess and at the top of the screen when viewing the complete tile set. The name for the currently loaded tile set is also shown at the right bottom of the Tile Factory screen. At some point you may wish to rearrange the order of the tiles in the set. You can use the swap two tiles function to swap the positions of any two tiles in the currently displayed set. When prompted, select each of the tiles that you want swapped either by entering the tile number or by using the mouse to point and click. If you change your mind hit the Esc key or select "No" when asked to confirm. Tile sets are normal files that can be copied, moved, deleted, etc. like any other file. You can, if you wish, also delete tile sets that are no longer needed from the file menu using the Delete Tile Set function. You can load and save the current color palette for use in other tile sets using functions from the File menu. EDIT MENU This menu allows you to do special editing functions on the current tile. These functions are described below. The flip functions let you reverse the image left/right or top/bottom. Hitting the same function a second time will flip the image back the way it originally was. The shift functions move the image in the specified direction by one pixel. This is handy if, for example, you want to center an image. Sometimes when drawing you'll want to match a color already in the picture. The Get Color function lets you select your current drawing color from within the drawing rather than from within the color bar. When you select this function the cursor will change to a cross plus the word "get". Move the cross over the color you want and click to select the new active color. The Copy function lets you outline and copy one part of your picture to another part. After selecting Copy move the cursor to the upper left corner of the area you want to copy. Then hold down the left mouse button and move to the lower right corner. When you release the button the area inside the rectangle will be saved. You can then use the Paste function to copy the saved image back into the tile or into another tile. You can use Paste as many times as you wish. The Shade function lets you take advantage of the SVGA color palette. After selecting Shade, position the cursor at the upper left corner of the area you want to shade then hold down the left mouse button while moving to the lower right corner. You'll then select which color within this area you want changed. Finally, you'll select the range of colors you wish the area to be changed to. For example, if you select first color 24 and then color 28 the area will be filled from the top with color 24 gradually changing to color 28 at the bottom. Note that the order you select the color range effects the way the shading is done. Shading always starts at the top of the selected rectangle with the first selected color. You can thus control whether the shading will go from dark to light or light to dark. If you don't want shading but just randomly selected colors within a specific range use fill instead. Undo is also available from this menu. Using this will restore the tile as it was before the most recent change. The image that will be restored is shown along the left side of the screen directly below the current image. You can also undo by clicking directly on the previous image, or on any other image that is below it. Up to five previous images are kept along the left side of the screen. OPTIONS MENU This menu allows you to select options that affect how other functions work. Each option can be toggled on or off. If an option is currently on a check mark will be shown to the right of the option name. When Tile Factory starts up it is set with snap cursor on. In this mode the mouse cursor jumps to the center of each pixel when in the drawing area, which ensures that you know exactly what pixel you're drawing. If you prefer you can turn this mode off and the cursor will then move smoothly. When drawing with the dot tool (freehand drawing) you can have your drawing mirrored left to right, top to bottom, or both. Toggle the appropriate mirror settings on and off to fit your needs. TEXT MENU The first three options let you choose whether text you enter will be left justified, right justified or centered. A check mark will indicate which choice is currently selected. Two fonts are available, the smaller one being 5x5 pixels and the larger 5x7 pixels. Choose the font you want from this menu. The currently selected font will be indicated with a check mark. When entering text using the text tool you have a choice on how close to the edge the text will be entered. Text usually looks best if there is a border around it at the edge of the tile face. However, if you have a long word that you wish to display you might want to disable this border to make the text fit. Try entering text first with the border enabled, but if you only need one or two more pixels to make it fit you can turn the border off and try again. SPECIAL MENU This menu accesses special functions that will not be used often. There are many tile sets available for my older tile solitaire games. The tiles were drawn in a 640x350 pixel, 16 color mode. The Special menu allows you to load and convert these tiles to the SVGA format. The Load EGA Tiles function simply loads an old style tile set. These tiles are 40x40 pixels whereas SVGA tiles are 40x55, so an area at the top of the tile is filled in. Tile Factory attempts to fill with a color that will match the rest of the tile. If simply loading the tile sets does not produce a pleasing result two options are available to modify tiles. The first simply centers the tile face image in the new, larger tile. In many cases this is all that's needed to use an older tile set. However, the aspect ratio of old and new tile sets is quite different so many old tile sets look "squished" when loaded into Tile Factory. An option is available to scale old tiles to the new format. This will correct the aspect ratio, but quite often you'll need to do additional editing to make the tiles look good. Note that the center and scale functions work on the entire tile set as currently displayed on the right side of the screen. With so many colors available it can be hard to keep track of which ones you've actually used. The Color Usage Graph function displays a chart of all colors with line height indicating frequency of use for each color. You can move the cursor into the chart to get exact values for colors of interest. The color number, what the color looks like, and how often it is used in your tile set are then shown. You can also use the chart to select a new color for drawing. Point to the color you want and click. The cursor will move to the Done button; click again to close the window and the new color will be selected. Share Your Creations! If you develop any tile sets you'd like to share please upload them to the support BBS (Xevious: 508-788-6951) or mail them to the author on a diskette. I'd suggest that you include a text file describing your tile set. If you do include a text file give it the same basic file name as the tile set file; for example, the tile set MYTILES.TL would have a text file MYTILES.TXT. You should also include your name in both the tile set itself and in the text file. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with! KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Many Tile Factory functions can be accessed from the keyboard. Below is the complete list of keys and their function. Key Function ------------ ------------------------------------ F1 or Alt-H Help F2 or Alt-I Info F3 or Alt-F File Menu F4 or Alt-E Edit Menu F5 or Alt-O Options Menu F6 or Alt-T Text Menu F7 or Alt-S Special Menu F10 or Alt-Q Quit (exit Tile Factory) X New (clear tile) S Save Tile R Read Tile Set Alt-L Load Tile Into Editor P Import .PCX Picture N Add Name To File Alt-D Delete Tile Set Q Quit (exit Tile Factory) < Flip left to right > Flip top to bottom - Shift Right + Shift Left ^ Shift Up | Shift Down G Get Color U Undo L Use the letter function (enter text) Z Use the fill function # Snap Cursor on/off M Mirroring left/right on/off Alt-M Mirroring top/bottom on/off T Text Border on/off - - - - - Tile Factory is copyright 1994 by Nels Anderson. All rights reserved.