Smart Fpg Editor

darío · August 26, 2011, 06:07:22 AM

Hi,

Porting the code means actually rewritting the whole program... If it is true that the "ideas" and structure of the program can remain (and this saves a lot of time) it still requires lot of time to code and right now I simply can't... I would like to see my Fpg Editor reaching version 1 (I have a development roadmap and the features I want for each version) and so I will leave ports for lateron...

Actually, I started to design and port the base library (the one that allows manipulating bennu file formats) to Java, with the intention of a future Smart Fpg Editor 2 which is multiplatform, but it is really soon to talk about that and I am not sure if I will ever have something to show...

Anyway thanks for the suggestion, I'm not saying I won't do it one day, just that right now I can't :)

darío · August 28, 2011, 02:48:15 PM

Hi,

I wanted to share with you a video showing some of the features of version 0.4.5 (which will be released in the following days).

The video shows some very handy features such us:
- Contextual menus in the editor: allows quick access to main actions
- "Look for next free control point" and "look for previous free control point" buttons in the Graphical Control Point editor: Eases "filling" control-points ids gaps in the graphical editor.
- Support to drag&drop files to the explorer: very useful to create MAP or PNGs files just by dragging graphics to the explorer. MAP files are the default format but if pressed Ctrl key while dragging, a PNG file is created instead.

For version 0.4.5 most user-requested features have been included (palette exporting, display file name in the title bar, allow calling SmartFpgEditor with arguments to open FPG files, ...).

I would like to ask people using this software to report bugs/requests found in version 0.4, so as I fix them or add last features before preparing the package.

NOTE: Already demanded features in this forum are being considered so no need to repeat :)

handsource-dyko · August 28, 2011, 06:09:10 PM

Wow! Great stuff...... That looks really good. That context menu is really handy, and the fpg opening with arguments makes it easy to integrate with malvado's mapeditor. :)

darío · September 03, 2011, 02:02:10 AM

Hi!

Version 0.4.5 is available for downloading at http://code.google.com/p/smartfpgeditor/. No much testing though, so please if you find any bug report it so as I can fix it asap.

Thanks to all of you who have give your feedback regarding SFPGE.

Hope you like it!

~~I'm a bit tired so I'll edit the initial post tomorrow...~~

Darío

darío · September 04, 2011, 10:19:42 AM

Hi!

So I just updated the first post with relevant information regarding the new version.

handsource-dyko · September 04, 2011, 11:25:18 AM

Hi, I think I found a small glitch. Drag and drop does not seem to work anymore between SPFE and external programs such as the gimp
and paint. When I try this with the gimp, it gives this message: Opening of 'C:\DOCUME~1\PIETER~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\~sfpge\#1# scenery map.map' failed. No such file or directory. I guess it tries to send a map format out instead of a png.

darío · September 04, 2011, 11:54:10 AM

Uhm, yehp I didn't think about that...

What is actually happening is that when doing drag&drop it is possible to add "several formats" to the "object that is being dragged". Now, besides adding the "DIB image format" the format "File" is also added. The target program is responsible to determine which format they prefer and I guess they are now opting for the "File" format, then they request Smart Fpg Editor to provide the name of the file, and forget about the "DIB image format".

So I do not see a clear solution for this in order to contemplate all situations... because if I remove the "File" format, then it is not possible to drop graphics in the explorer, and if I add it, the image editors will be use it instead of the "image format" they should use... I'll need to think about it. For the moment you have the following solutions:

- Use copy&paste instead of DD which will output the same result as in v0.4.0 when dragging.
- Use the "ctrl" key while dragging, which will generate a "PNG" file instead of a "MAP" file, so the graphic edition program will be able to open it.

Thanks for reporting it, and if you have some idea regarding what would be the expected behaviour let me know.

Regards,
Darío

handsource-dyko · September 04, 2011, 05:21:00 PM

Maybe you could default to png format when an application requests for a FILE object. I don't know how windows handles drag and drop internally, but does the API have some routine to tell what the name of the application is that accepts the object? In that case you could default to DIB, and make an exception for the windows explorer. (But again, I don't know anything about the win32 api, so this is hypothetical).

Or, maybe create a user definable setting, or a dialogbox with a on option for the user to choose between the two scenarios.

JaViS · July 28, 2015, 05:47:42 PM

Hi dario,

I heard that Google Code is shutting down. Plz make sure you are hosting the project in any other Git server like Bitbucket.

Your editor is very useful, it would be a shame if it get lost.

darío · July 28, 2015, 11:29:22 PM

Thanks, I'll se what I can do, I have all the sources in my computer and several backups so it is not going to disapear...
I did not know there were still people using it :) I do not know how many times I have attempted to continue started a port but I never continued...

I should upload the complete sources (including bennulib and smartcontrols) perhaps someone will make the port I never made...

warrior_rockk · July 29, 2015, 11:54:36 AM

I suggest Sourceforge because they have a migration tool from google code repository to sourceforge that makes life easy!

JaViS · July 31, 2015, 01:02:31 AM

Quote from: darío on July 28, 2015, 11:29:22 PM
Thanks, I'll se what I can do, I have all the sources in my computer and several backups so it is not going to disapear...
I did not know there were still people using it :) I do not know how many times I have attempted to continue started a port but I never continued...

I should upload the complete sources (including bennulib and smartcontrols) perhaps someone will make the port I never made...

I think it's the best designed tool. The drag and drop and zoom functionalities are very handy

Enviado desde mi Nexus 7 mediante Tapatalk

darío · July 31, 2015, 04:12:18 PM

A promise is a promise...

It took longer that whised but it is now moved to bitbucket (I appreciate your suggestion warrior_rockk but since I was not using any versioning system in google code I needed anyway to set it up from scratch...).

https://bitbucket.org/dacucar/smart-fpg-editor

Git sources have also been uploaded. Complete sources (including that of all custom Active X components). I still need to test that I have uploaded everything that was needed. There were some WIP changes on the last source I had (the one that is now on Git) so it is not exactly matching the latest binary package version...

The README needs some work yet, but at least the project will not disappear from earth :). Read it carefully if you plan to build your own version.

By the way, I know the installer package worked on Windows Xp, Vista and 7, has anyone attempted to use it on any newer Windows version? (I am not up to date when it comes to windows...).

JaViS · July 31, 2015, 05:38:06 PM

Thanks!!

I'm currently using it in Windows 8 and works perfectly out of the box. I've been able to run it in Ubuntu too, but after installing several packages, and I couldn't achieve it every time I've tried.

Thank you very much for re hosting the project. Again, I believe it's the best FPG editor available.

I would consider writing it in C#, but with the current development status of BennuGD, everything seems so uncertain, that I feel we should wait before approaching any project like that.

Still I'm working on a game which is in a very advanced status and Smart FPG is one of my essential tools

darío · July 31, 2015, 07:23:10 PM

No problem, thank you for the reminder and the comments. You got me in the right moment and I was feeling nostalgic... :)

Strictly speaking, a port of the current functionality with nowadays frameworks would be relatively easy... I had to deal with a lot of stuff that was not out-of-the-box in VB6 and made extensive use of Win32API so as the editor was usable with the functionality I wanted it to have.

Whenever I've thought of a port I always wanted to make it multi-platform as I do not use Windows on a daily basis... I considered and C#, Visual Basic with Mono, but I was not satisfied with the options I had for creating the GUI. Then I started a port in Python using wxPython (which I was familiar with), but the version of wxPython at that time was not supported in Python 3, and I did not feel happy to start a project with an "old" language, as it happened the first time. I did howver started coding it.

Considering the downloads of the latest binary version, released in 2011 it does not seem like a lot of people is using my application... Therefore, if I was to port Smart Fpg Editor I would like it to be a little bit more generic, and think of it as a "sprite atlas" arranger or something like that so as it can be used for purposes outside Bennu, for example to create sprite sheets that can be used by people creating games. The biggest reward for people that code for fun and not for money is to find their applications being used... you know...

I'll give it a chance to my Python port as I think it can be pretty straightforward and I see that there is a wxPython that works with Python 3. I have created another Bitbucket project and will open it if I see it comes to a decent status.

I have some questions though for you as a user:

- Have you ever used the non-visual control point editor?
- How do you use the drag&drop functionality? There is drag&drop between different windows, but it is also possible to drag&drop to the desktop or to other applications. Have you ever used those functionalities?
- What about support for 8bpp maps? Are you using it?