New picture editor!

eidolon	Whoop! I've just started out to write a new picture editor. :) Please visit my website for info! Comments, suggestions and threats are welcome! ;)
sonneveld	I think it looks great.  any idea when there will be a release? - Nick
AGI1122	Wow that looks good. I can't wait to try it.
eidolon	Thanks for the encouragement! :) Maybe in a couple of weeks there will be something, but I'm trying not to make this a rush job. [hr] Please let me know if there is something you wish for. I am not an AGI vet so I really don't know what the most indicated features are.
Nailhead	Awesome! APE is looking good. Good luck on this. by the way, will it be open source?
eidolon	Thx! Open source? - Absolutely, how else would I get the bugs fixed? ;) Besides... information should be free, right?
sonneveld	Eidolon.. hows the editor coming along?  Have you managed to find time to work on it? :) - Nick
eidolon	Yes, I had a little time to spare today!! :) So, a few lines of code were written, and it compiled w/o errors (for once)! This is what I have done so far: You can download a VERY early beta of APE on this temporary site:
sonneveld	Very nice.. is there any way you could add the ability to remap keys?  my keyboard doesn't have a keypad so I'm unable to zoom in and out.  How are you planning to design the interface?  similar to picedit or something different? - Nick
AGI1122	That looks great, I like the faded priority thing.
AGI1122	Here is a pic taken from the fan game V, I noticed some distortion in it when I loaded it, I have circled the places that have this distortion.
eidolon	I have changed the zoom keys, extirpated the plotting bug and added a simple way to move objects. But I think that it feels quite unwieldy, so I must take a little break and chew it over. I want to simplify picture editing as far as possible. Colour and priority are properties of an object instead of independent commands, all line types appear the same, special tools for drawing curved lines, etc.
sonneveld	Well, if you have trouble with the rendering.. You should check out the Sarien, AGIL code or ask me and I'll email you the picture render code from NAGI. Are you planning on supporting external background pics to draw over like Picedit? The PCX support in picedit is broken I believe.. so it would be nice if other formats were later supported. - Nick
eidolon	Thank you, but I hope I
eidolon	Ok, so now APE supports template images (I have included one too). You can try it if you like and tell me if it works. What I
sonneveld	Looking good so far.  I like how you can shift things around with the right mouse button..  I can tell that will be very handy. I think it would be useful to be able to define template objects.. and then paste them wherever you want.  Like a star or a door but in a non-fixed position.  I'm not sure how you would go about defining them. Another nice feature would be the ability to split a picture up.  AGI supports overlays.. where a part of a picture is drawn over another part.  So what would be nice is some sort of function that loads up an agi picture in the background, that's read-only, and then let the user add to the picture and save a pic overlay. i hope that made sense. Another useful feature, which I don't know how feasible it would be to implement would be the ability to split a picture up into sections (like 3 third sections).. when commands spread across two sections, the program could split it into two separate commands. The only reason why I suggest this is for pictures for mazes, where only a portion of the screen may change.  I had this idea of only having to draw corners of the pic, and then overlaying them all together to create a whole. Any chance of releasing code with these pre-betas?  I could offer patches if they'd help. - Nick
eidolon	Thanks for your ideas! This is my plan: It will be possible to copy, cut and paste any selection. These selections can, on their part, be saved as separate pictures, and likewise loaded and inserted into the current project. (Selections can also be moved, rotated, scaled, and so on.) As for overlays, perhaps they could just be loaded and saved as selections (?). Splitting pictures up is an interesting idea. Splitting lines would not be a problem, but dividing fills would certainly be a hard row to hoe. Probably too hard for me. I will gladly share all my code, as soon as I have a solid codebase. My intentions are entirely idealistic, and thus everyone with interest in this project will be an influence.
sonneveld	Have you looked at using ParaGUI? Apparently that's a useful gui toolkit for SDL.  The author's dropped working on it but is looking for somebody else to take over.  It might be helpful if you're looking at how you would implement an interface. - Nick
Kon-Tiki	Another feature which would come in handy would be that you draw a whole picture and you can devide them into screens for the game. That would make the sliding a lot more fluently.
Kon-Tiki	Does anyone know where Eidolon's gone to? There's no way I can reach him :-\ -Kon-Tiki-