Here's another screen shot of the work so far, with part of the cell type editor showing (not finished yet).
I've improved it so that the editing tools can either be a separate pane that appears on the left or right side (which are both possible, I'll have a selector that lets you pick where you want it to be), or on the toolbar (as the cell type selector shows).
The actual selection between pane or toolbar probably won't be user settable, it just wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to do so (the cell type editor is simple and only needs one dropdown for setting the cell type, whereas the tile picker shows actual tiles and needs a lot more screen real estate).
Anyway, here it is:
(As you can see, there's a slight glitch with the cell type list, as it's not showing all the possible types yet. I just have to make the drop down list slightly longer).
The toolbars are rebars, meaning you can drag them around and you could have the cell type editor on the second row (just no docking yet, wherein you can 'rip' the toolbar away from the rebar and have it floating; that's logic I have to implement manually and it definitely won't come in the first release). I probably will have a setting you can set to place it into a popup box (for both types of map editing tools).
Also note, on the editing tools where they are fixed to the left / right side of the screen, their width is adjustable (you can drag the divider between the tools and the area where the maps are shown).
As for switching between tools, I haven't written that yet but it will likely be selectable from the Layer menu (currently grayed out) as well as toolbar buttons. At some point I also plan to enable plugins to allow people to write their own tools for special purposes.
Other tools I plan on having that aren't in earlier versions are:
- Definitely some sort of 'brush' system that virtually every other game map editor has. This being, you can select a brush size (in tiles) and 'paint' onto the map, the mapper will automatically figure out the edge tiles to make a transition between the different types of terrain.
- Automatic cell type setting (part of the brushes) - when tiles are painted, it sets the cell type accordingly so you don't have to do that manually.
- Better 'tile group', or as it appears Dynamix called it (from looking at some left over map resources in the Outpost2 Pre-demo), "Landforms" which really is a better name, support allowing you to add, remove, and edit landforms.
Already implemented is animations. If you happen to have an animated tile on the map such as a volcano or lava animation, it will play the animation (rather than refusing to play it as the old mapper did).
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions regarding the new mapper, be sure to let me know!
