DAME - a new map editor made using flixel!

[XanderXevious]

Hi, I'm new to flixel
and Sorry that I'm not good at English.
（T T , in fact I am typing in the dictionary help, I hope you can understand the meaning of my expression）

I have one question about sprite layer:
How to export data of sprite layer?
I export map layer's data to .csv file and it works well but I don't know how to deal with sprite layer.

I earnestly studied your sample（SimpleClaws and ComplexClaws）
I found that you added all coins in level.as manually. So many lines code.
Is there a way to automatically add all coins according to what I set in the Dame?

Hi,
Actually the code that adds all those sprites was generated by exporters in DAME! For simpleClaws you run the flixelSimple exporter and for ComplexClaws you run the flixelComplex exporter. There is also a basic xml exporter that generates them as xml data. A more advanced xml exporter will be coming with DAME 3 which is capable of generating all of the data required to run those samples.

About Sprite Editor and Tile editor in DAME3: If you would add the ability to paste clipboard data that comes from Photoshop and keep it's transparency while pasting it.

I don't think that's possible The transparencies are internal. At least, there's no way I can get the transparencies in Air, and I've tried going from one professional paint package to another to see how they behave and transparencies appear to be lost in those too. If anyone has any idea how to do it then do let me know!

[test84]

Thanks for the reply.

1- Toggling Select/Move on and off is really cumbersome. I wish we could make it more intelligent, like when you decide a sprite from Sprites tab, you probably want to insert it to the map, right? So it would be nice if it would toggle off the Select/Move automatically.

I find myself and my designer lots of times pressing V and B to toggle it on and off where I believe we can track cases and find situations that it would turn itself on and off in a more smart manner.

2- I want to have some of my tiles as breakable. So would you tell me how I can set a Breakable property on tiles and how to handle it in the code?

3- I found out how to set property for each tile in DAME but I donno how to catch it and write the actual SetTileProperty code for it (don't tell me DAME can do it for me!) I can catch when the whole FlxTileMap is getting processed to the call back but how I can find which ones have that property that I set in DAME?

4- I tried to use "property" that is passed to callback function but it's weird, I attached a picture of inside it so you can see what I'm saying. I believe there shouldn't be %DAME_tiledata% stored in the first cell of that array. And I didn't change that part of complex exporter, it's same as one supplied with DAME.

BTW, I've been using Zoom out (at your own risk) and it was fine so far.

[Coman]

Thanks ！
I got it  ^_^

[XanderXevious]

1. I'll look into trying to catch some of those cases. At the very least it makes sense that if you select a sprite entry and are on a sprite layer then you would go straight into paint mode.
2. It would have to be done as a custom property just as you were doing in 3 (since breakable is not a standard behaviour)
4. %DAME_tiledata% is added as a property to the tilemap layer directly from the exporter itself, so that's correct. It's done this way so it can be extremely generic and flexible. It only adds that property if there are any tile properties. Remember that these exporters are trying to be fairly generic and lightweight rather than being nice and streamlined and optimised or generating very pretty code! So when you get your properties, you just need to look for an entry called %DAME_tiledata% and cast the value as a Dictionary. Then you just iterate through all the entries. The keys are the tile ids where one or more properties are set and the values are the data you set on that tile property. It's basically a property entry that stores a dictionary of tiles mapped onto yet another set of properties per tile! Here's an example:

Code: [Select]

i = properties.length;
while(i--)
{
if ( properties[i].name == "%DAME_tiledata%" )
{
// Retrieve the dictionary for this layer.
var tileProperties:Dictionary = properties[i].value;

// Iterate through every tile in the dictionary.
for ( var tileIdObj:Object in tileProperties )
{
var tileId:int = tileIdObj as int;
// Retrieve the properties array for that tile.
var tileProps:Array = tileProperties[tileId];
var j:int = tileProps.length;

// Iterate through every property on that tile.
while ( j-- )
{
var propname:String = tileProps[j].name;
if ( propname == "breakable" )
{
// do stuff...
}
}
}
}
}


[test84]

Thanks Charles, That piece of code is exactly what I need! Genius.

One thing about DAME exporter settings file, it would be nice if it could store address as relative asn I'm passing DAME files back and forth with my designer, we always have to change the address of AS3 and CSV files since obviously their paths are different from mine and his machine.

As you suggested, In order to create animted tiles, I read about CreateTileDataText but couldn't get my head around what do I have to do about it.

[XanderXevious]

(The mythical) DAME 3 has an option in the exporter window to store (and convert) paths as relative.

[test84]

Great.

I'm positive that import method doen't work at all. I tried any possible combination with it and none of them worked. It's very crucial for us and the options it has are exactly what we need but I have no idea why the don't work.

Hint: the file I'm trying to merge comes from another PC, so it's paths are different from this PC but I tried both the same path and relative path options, none working so far.

[test84]

We faced that problem that DAME files would not load correctly on one PC, which is Win XP. I tried uninstall/reinstalling AIR and DAME but didn't help. I tried copying another DAME from another PC but it just opened it's first level without shoting any tile graphics.

I tried to open the dam file in notepad++ and I see that no level groups are there. I thought DAME kinda messed that file but that's not stable because another time that it could not load the level, it has all the data in it.

Thanks.

[test84]

After hours and hours of trying anything-that-possibly-comes-into-my-mind I found a way to at least make DAME work: by deleting it's folder from %appdata% folder. It's probably something to do with WinXP since I don't have this problem with another Win7 but maybe it's just OK with these systems.

[LaughingLeader]

Hi everyone. I've been using DAME for the past couple of weeks and I'd like to share that DAME is an absolute time-saver for me. It took me a little while to figure out how to write a custom exporter, but once I got that working, my level data is automatically built when I export it from DAME, which is tremendously helpful. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into making/working on DAME, XanderXevious.

I have some feedback about some minor bugs I've experienced with DAME.

I've noticed that when I update a sprite's property, position, or pretty much change anything relating to it, I have to close and re-open the project for the new data to export correctly(I don't have to close DAME completely, as going to New, then back to Recent Files -> MyProject correctly updates the sprites for export).

The other bug I've encountered is that if I leave DAME open for a while (I have dual monitor setup, so I like to leave DAME running on my other window), DAME tends to run slower when I tab back to it.

Other than those minor bugs, everything else has been great.

[vol53]

On the next version of Dame, can you make the interface as simple as in the interface like Tiled? And possibly getting rid of the white box, in which everything can be painted.

[test84]

Note to self and probably hint to others:

If you make two layers that their scroll factor is 1 and you use complex exporter and you try to read the baseminx and other values from your base level file, it can get faulty because it's apparently designed for games with one map layers with scrolling level of 1. So be careful or change the behavior that maxx and other related values are calculated.

[Jeff]

I have downloaded the latest Master of Flixel (2.55 I think) and Flex SDK 4.5.1 wich is the latest too... I really dont get what is going wrong here as nobody else has encountered that problem before and I have done nothing else than importing Flixel to the samples source... 

Update: After hours of thinking and trying out different versions and stuff I recognized something in the project settings: It was somehow set to Flash Player 9.  I feel very dumb right now. 

I had the exact same problem with exactly the same error messages, so thank you for giving the update: the settings were initially set to Flash Player 9, which caused the problem for me too.

Would it make sense to change the default Flash Player setting for Dame?

I'm just starting to get to know Dame, and already it seems like an excellent tool for Flixel. I just wish I had more time to work with this.

[paala]

Is it possible to have in DAME sprites(images) and then export them as csv like  tilemap?
This is very useful to me since i don;t have the complicated structure like in dame exporters, and I would like to place the sprites with dame on tilemap and then export them as csv.
Thanks!

[c023-DeV]

So, Charles, wazzup? Can we get a sneak peek at DAME 3 ? I'm damn curious! I'd like to start building an exporter for flixel and axel! Will You dip into www.axgl.org? *Hope so...*

[KunoNoOni]

Is there a tutorial or something which talks about paths/platforms in DAME?


-KunoNoOni

[test84]

How in my exporter (which is basically like ComplexExporter) make one specific sprite layer not "add" ed in the generated level file?

In the exporter file, you check that if "addGroup" is true, then you add it to the master layer and it's totally fine, thing is, I want it to not add the sprite layer that has player inside it.

[XanderXevious]

I've opened up DAME 3 for a private beta.

If anyone's interested then PM me, or email me and I'll send you a link.

Public release in 2 weeks, I think!

[camasthecat]

At last!

[mol]

awesome!