LePlatz is a level editor for the Platz toolset (supporting Platz v1.0). LePlatz eliminates the tedious task of converting images of your game world into textual data structures. LePlatz provides a gui with a set of tools corresponding to the logical structure of the format expected by the Platz toolset. You simply need to draw shapes on your game world canvas and LePlatz does the rest. More specifically LePlatz will:
- Match and select the underlying tiles/patterns/animations
- Configure mutable background bitmaps
- Configure moving platform directories
- Maintain valid background index ordering
- Determine appropriate slice boundary collision parameters
- Facilitate rearrangement of slice ordering
- Validate game world structure
- Compile game world for inclusion in C code
Currently there is a windows build and a Linux/X11 build. The linux build has been tested on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) and Fedora 12. If you have trouble running it on some other distro, you can always download the code and build it. If any Mac users want to build and test a Mac version, I will add it to the download section.
B.C. Dash
There is an included example with the download: <install dir>/examples/bcdash/bcdash.xml. B.C. Dash was recreated with LePlatz and the LePlatz project file can be viewed as an example of how to achieve certain things. I have included all of the game's art resources and the Tile Studio file which you may use as you like. It is now *very* easy to make new Dashes. All you need to do is build the background images with the tiles, maps and animations provided and then process them in LePlatz. You can compile, build and test it with a few clicks.
The only changes required are that you included the final four slices of the original B.C. Dash game (for title/intro/utility) and change the following values in the Makefile:
- -DSLICE_COUNT=53 // This should equal your new slice count (not counting the four required slices i.e. this is an offset to those slices)
- -DSTART_Y=40 // This is the height from which the panther is dropped into the first slice. You need him outside any BGC bgs
I should also note the following changes in the emulator if you wish to see emulator stdout from within LePlatz. They don't have any significant performance penalty as they are not run often:
Code: Select all
char caption[128];
sprintf(caption,"uzebox emulator v1.09 (ESC=quit, F1=help) %02d.%03d Mhz",cycles/now/1000,(cycles/now)%1000);
if (uzebox.fullscreen)
puts(caption);
else
SDL_WM_SetCaption(caption, NULL);
+++ fflush(stderr);
+++ fflush(stdout);
LePlatz download available here.
LePlatz code available here.
User documentation for LePlatz is available here.
LePlatz will see significant code refactoring shortly, so if you plan on making any changes, I'd hang out for a couple of weeks.
Edit:
Linux users who launch from console may see this warning:
"CRITICAL: atk_object_set_name: assertion `name != NULL' failed"
It appears to be a known bug for a number of programs running under Karmic. It doesn't seem to bother LePlatz despite outputting the warning from a library that LePlatz is using.
Very nice work Paul.
