[Coco] Phoenix IDE gaining sprite/tiles/map editor

[Roger Taylor]

At 03:00 PM 5/10/2011, you wrote:
>My current game for the CoCo, "Fortress", does not map the tiles in 
>the conventional way. They are also very large. A normal Sprite 
>editor does not suit and so I have broken the graphics development 
>process into several stages.
>
>Stage one was to write a custom map editor in BASIC... completed.
>Stage two is to draw the graphic elements that make up the graphics 
>with my Amiga, saving the pages of graphics as individual GIF 
>images. Later these are transferred to the CoCo using GIFREADR... 
>work in progress.
>Stage three, I will write a BASIC program that will take these 
>images and compress and compile each graphic element to take up less space.
>Stage four, I write code within the game that during play will build 
>the finished map into graphics, storing it in another compressed 
>format for the Game Engine itself to use.
>A lot of post processing of graphics but this is necessary to reduce 
>the burden of graphics manipulation to the CPU during runtime and 
>allow the game to run as fast as I can to achieve the desired frame rate.
>This engine will move large amounts of graphic data at 30 frames per 
>second. The addition of sound and the remainder of the game elements 
>will push it down to 15 frames per second.
>The engine will use 115K of RAM to operate (not including the 
>compressed graphics) and will utilize double buffering and offer 
>hardware scrolling of 1 byte (2 pixel) increment (this is working now).
>A lot of work but hopefully the end result will be satisfying.
>
>Nick Marentes


With all that manual labor, you could use an IDE.  :)


-- 
~ Roger Taylor