As some may have learned from a poll I posted a while ago, I've been working on a sprite editor in Axe. Or at least I was working on it, but put it down for a while to work on other stuff. But I want to come back to it, and I want to make sure it's as feature-packed and awesome as it can be. So before I get back to work on it, I'd like to know: What features would you want to see in the on-calc sprite editor of your dreams? Did I miss any useful editing tools? Did I miss a file operations feature? Request any features that you don't already see in the list below, or tell me about features already in the list below that you would especially like to see implemented.

Potential features (some are obviously more fundamental than others and will definitely be implemented, whereas others would probably be ridiculously complex to implement):

• Black and white, 3-level gray, and 4-level gray sprites
• Masked sprites
• Sprites of any size
• Viewing and editing at any zoom level, including zoom levels that don't fully fit on the screen (scrolling will be necessary)
• Point tool
• Line tool
• Box tool
• Circle tool
• Variable pen size for drawing commands
• Fill tool
• Text tool
• Hex editing
• Area selection, transforming, cut, copy, and paste
• Palette transformations (e.g. changing the color of all dark gray pixels to light gray and all light gray pixels to dark gray)
• Sprite transformations (flip, rotate, shift)
• Sprite conversion/attribute editing (e.g. changing size, changing gray level)
• Tilemaps
• Animations
• A full filesystem (files, folders, shortcuts, etc. with names and attributes)
• A file explorer
• A menu system
• Shortcut keys for most menu items
• Search
• File sorting in folders by various attributes
• Importing data from and exporting data to pictures, strings, and Ans
• Undo/redo
• File selecting, moving, copying, and deleting from the file explorer
• Batch sprite transformations

I see what you mean by how sets could be useful. I think that can probably be covered by the user having multiple sprites with the same attributes in a folder, so I don't know if I'd need a specific "Set" function.

And even if this thing ends up with AI, I'd probably still just call it a sprite editor.

That's a lot of features O_o
I can only think of a couple things that are missing:
Ability to scroll (So we can edit, say, a 32*32 sprite at 4x zoom)
Cut/Copy/Paste (Box selection, unless you really want to add the ability to deal with user-drawn shapes )

Can't wait to see if you implement this!

That would be great! Does it work with frames/animations already? if it doesn't, I'd like to see that too

"I already have planned animations as a potential feature, although I haven't worked on it (or most things on that list). Most of what I've worked on so far is the filesystem itself and making sure I set up a framework that will support a vast array of features, like animations."

There is a sprite editor made by Deep Thought I think which has animations, you could check it

I haven't really thought about how the tilemap editor will end up, but that's a nice idea. And I've already built room into the tilemap filetype's metadata to support any tile bit depth from 0-15.

Export function, thats what I've missed in your last version xD

Export function, thats what I've missed in your last version xD

It's already in the list, bundled in with an import function.

Also would this be an APP? The issue with the other tilemapper was having to archive/unarchive everything back and forth during development. I know I can use Doors or CalcUtil, but when I develop, I prefer that no other ASM stuff is being used on my calc. In other words, only Axe and my work will run. It's quite easy to mess something up in Axe and if it happens to conflict with CalcUtil or Doors it has higher chances to mess things up.

There are multiple reasons that this will definitely be an application:

• Running the program as an assembly executable would take up a large portion of user RAM just to hold the executable. This will leave little free space for anything else, like the data appvar.
• The finished program will undoubtedly be larger than the assembly executable code limit. (I hope I can even fit it into an app!)
• This will leave more user RAM free, allowing all data to exist in RAM. This (hopefully) means no constant unarchiving and archiving will be necessary.
• Leaving more user RAM free will also allow for the free space to be used as an extensive undo/redo history.
• It seems more suitable for large utilities like this to be an application, anyways.

Quote from: Ikkerens on November 29, 2010, 04:06:35 pm

Export function, thats what I've missed in your last version xD

It's already in the list, bundled in with an import function.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on November 29, 2010, 04:09:58 pm

Also would this be an APP? The issue with the other tilemapper was having to archive/unarchive everything back and forth during development. I know I can use Doors or CalcUtil, but when I develop, I prefer that no other ASM stuff is being used on my calc. In other words, only Axe and my work will run. It's quite easy to mess something up in Axe and if it happens to conflict with CalcUtil or Doors it has higher chances to mess things up.

There are multiple reasons that this will definitely be an application:

• Running the program as an assembly executable would take up a large portion of user RAM just to hold the executable. This will leave little free space for anything else, like the data appvar.
• The finished program will undoubtedly be larger than the assembly executable code limit. (I hope I can even fit it into an app!)
• This will leave more user RAM free, allowing all data to exist in RAM. This (hopefully) means no constant unarchiving and archiving will be necessary.
• Leaving more user RAM free will also allow for the free space to be used as an extensive undo/redo history.
• It seems more suitable for large utilities like this to be an application, anyways.

Yeah. With many BASIC utilities, you need to archive the entire game, unarchive the sprite editor/map maker, make sprites/maps, archive the editor, unarchive the map program to paste the data in, archive it, unarchive the game, test, and repeat for your 200 or so maps/sprites. X.x