itch.io

Hello,

Sorry yes I know you posted this question before, I didn't mean to ignore you, I've been thinking about it.

It is definitely something I'm going to consider for the next release, in fact you can already do it (sort of)...

What I mean is that if you have a project file that is configured for 16x16 tiles, CharPad will happily load it and let you edit it, you just can't currently create such a project in CharPad, so it's probably not very useful to you!

(hex editing an existing project's tile dimensions can be done very easily but you would still need the file size to be correct, it could be done).

I have added your request to the todo list and will do some tests very soon.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Hello,

Thank you for your appreciation and for your question, it is something that has come up many times over the years.

The simple answer is that it is currently only possible to have 1 charset, 1 tile-set and 1 map.

We have thought about adding support for multiple maps many times over the years and while it would be theoretically possible, it also introduces many complications, for instance, currently each project has a single display mode, a single matrix colouring method and at least one common colour (ie. screen colour)...

If multiple map support were added, we would soon be asked to allow different display mode, colouring method etc for each map, some people would then not be happy that all maps have to use the same char-set or the same tile-set, so would request multiple support for those as well.

The point I am making is that any introduction of multiple maps, tile-sets or chars  would almost certainly add enormous complexity to the program, opening a proverbial "can of worms".

In the end, we decided to just keep it simple, a lot of "multi-map" situations can be resolved by simply drawing all required maps into one big map and using the Flexi-grid feature to export the data for each sub-map separately if required.

Also, would you really want to use the same char-set on ie. all 16 levels of your game? that could be quite boring for the players (ok many classic 80's games did this!)

So I'm sorry if this answer is disappointing but I hope you see what I mean about the "can of worms" it could become, it's really not as simple as it may seem and there is usually an alternative route that can be taken.

Cheers.

Ok I have replied to your email, please check your spam folder if you havn't seen it yet (that is where I found your email!).

I hope that helps, please don't post any details about it on here.

Cheers.

Hi, thank you very much for supporting us with your purchase, it is really appreciated.

Please email me (subchrist@protonmail.com) and I will try and help you ASAP.

Hello,

Ok, firstly.. the sprites in those cells do not need to be empty/blank, instead they need to contain (references to) sprite image *zero*, ie. the very first sprite in the set (it is a good idea to keep it blank).

You can use the Sprite Brush tool to paint sprite images into the cells of a tile.

You may also find it helpful to use the compressor to make sure only one blank is present (in the sprite-set) and used in the tiles...

ie. If you are pixelling tiles by hand then decompression is enforced/necessary before you can do this which will make every sprite-cell (in the tile) refer to a different sprite image, so try compressing when you have finished pixelling (to make all the "blanks" use sprite zero and that will let you see the expansions).

I hope that helps!

Hello,
Thanks for your comment, I totally agree, a feature to change the grid colour (and window background colour, they are one and the same) was added a few weeks ago and will be in the next release.

If you want to copy and paste some chars from the set...

- open a project that has chars you want to copy/paste.

- click the starting character in the Char Set form, then hold SHIFT and click the ending character to select the range.

- hit CTRL+C, or go to the menu and choose Chars->Copy.

- open up the project you want to paste into, select the starting pos/char in the set and hit CTRL+V or go to the menu and find Chars->Paste for a few different paste options (insert, overwrite, append).

Hello,
Thank you very much for your support :) ) much appreciated.

Please try doing a copy/paste from project1 to project2, doing a binary load will just overwrite the chars in project2 (colours/modes will be the same as the overwritten chars).

Copying/pasting should work out better and can be done as an overwrite if necessary (see the Chars menu when the Char-set window is active for all the Paste options).

Ok I found the issue, there isn't actually any corruption of the data, the issue is just that the "has overlay" flag for every sprite are being set true, so it makes the sprite set appear corrupted.

If you select all the sprites (ctrl+a) and hit the "Has Overlay" checkbox you can clear all the overlay flags. You helped me find another problem though, the binary import (sprites) feature is meant to offer a format selection dialog to the user before loading the binary and it isn't working in the C++ version.

Hi, yes you are right there does seem to be some issue there, they import fine if you choose "Blank" in the attribute choice dialog but are mis-ordered if you choose "SpritePad" attribute format.

Will investigate, thanks!

Hi, if you want to use more than 256 tiles then you can do it yes, you will just need to export the map data as 12bit or 16bit.

Exporting as 12bit or 16bit is currently only available (from CharPad) as text/asm/ascii but you can still use it in your project, just include the exported text as a link in your source code and build your project.

See the import/export menu items.

ps. unless you plan to dynamically load the data as binary from disk on the C64 at runtime, in that case you *will* actually need it in binary form I guess, CharPad can't currently do it but there are workarounds.

Hi there, ok I will try to help if I can.

Do you have a specific question? it is a bit complicated yes, CharPad C16 actually uses a simplified version of the real machine's bitmap colouring system, you can click the "warning triangle" in the Project window for some more details about that.

Today I was trying to edit/delete/repost a couple of my replies about my project's and managed to delete the user's original post that I was replying to instead.

The placement of the edit/delete options is really not very clear and could easily apply to the post either above or below.

It would be nice if there could be some pop-up confirmation box, like "Really delete post from Dave123 ?"

Thanks.

Hello,

The short answer is..  no, not currently.

Each sprite image (in SpritePad) can only "have" an overlay, meaning that the current sprite is always treated as an underlay (if only a single layer).

For this reason it is easiest to draw your overlay first, ie. a black hi-res outline, then configure the desired overlay distance, then move to the  underlay image, set it's "Has Overlay" checkbox and and colour it in.

From a programming perspective, as the renderer moves through the images it can only (easily) determine if an image *has* an overlay, not if it *is* an overlay.

(Each image contains only a "Has Overlay" flag).

The renderer would have to be made more complex (and slower) to do what you would like and then all of the underlays and overlays would appear the same in the sprite set window (ie. both layers rendered), a bit confusing I think.

The next version will at least have a toggle button to quickly switch between underlay/overlay.

Hi,

The ability to move characters with map/tile auto-correction already exists...

It is implemented in CharPad (and SpritePad) as a Swap operation...

1. Select the item you want to move (LEFT mouse button)...

2. Hold the CTRL key then select the item you want to swap with (LEFT mouse button).

The map (or tile-set) data will be automatically updated to appear identical.

It also works exactly the same way with the tile-set.

Yes of course! that is the reason they exist.

Our tools have been used in the creation of hundreds of games and demos over the last 20 years including most of the biggest "physical" releases .

 There are no better "general purpose" tools for the job.

I recommend studying how the Commodore 64 (multi-colour) char mode works.

A char will only appear multi-colour (wide-pixel) if it's native colour is >7.

But fair enough, you are not the first to have trouble with this idea so I will look into making it simpler for novices.

1. make sure the display mode is "Text - Multi-colour".

2. make sure the "Colour Matrix (low nyb)" colour is one from the bottom row (ie. 8-15), you should see wide red dots on the palette image to indicate WIDE. 

You can also find information about all this in the included help files.

Ok so apparently the tax interview has to be taken again after 3 years.

Thanks for letting me know, I had to find that out for myself.

Edit Profile / Tax Information

Maybe others will find this information helpful.

So my tax information is suddenly invalid after 3+ years?

Ok, thanks for only letting me know this only after posting on this public forum.

Also I don't recall "Demanding to be paid sooner" so I don't appreciate your choice of words there. 

Unbelievable, I hope there is somebody else available to properly deal with my situation.

Thanks for your reply,

I hope you can understand my frustration with having to wait 3 weeks (so far, maybe 4? 5? who knows) to receive a mere $150 payout when up until this point the payouts have generally been 14 days or less, 4 days on at least one occasion.

I see no explanation for this longer duration in your reply.

If there is some particular issue (relating to my account) that I can assist you with then I would be glad to help.

Yeah this is getting bloody ridiculous, I been waiting 20 days now for around a $100 payment, I have no idea what the problem is and heard nothing.

Really unprofessional. It was bad enough having to wait 14 days.

Where is our money?

Is there even any point sending you an email? 

a professional would be sending *us* one offering an apology. 

It's just infuriating.

No problem :) 

Actually I made a mistake in my earlier reply so have edited it.

Hi,

The usual way to move characters around is just by using the cut/copy/paste features, you can also use the Insert/Delete keys and also the LEFT mouse button with CTRL held can be used to swap any two items in a set.

Use LEFT mouse button + SHIFT to select a range of items.

All of the various options will appear in the "Chars" menu at the top of the main window when the character set form is active.

Yes a sprite in multi-colour mode can use 3 colours (4 if you include the background, transparent).

Two of those colours are shared with all other multi-colour sprites and each sprite gets it's own colour whether hi-res or multi-colour.

Hello,

Sorry to disappoint you but only one overlay is currently possible for each sprite image or tile.

As the C64 only has 8 hardware sprites, using three or more for a single object was not something I really wanted to encourage :)

This may of course change in a future version, especially if there is a demand.

Thanks for considering us.

Hi,

With the Sprite Set (form) active if you go to the "Sprites" menu item you should see "Select All" at the top.

You can also use SHIFT and the LEFT button to select any range of sprites and change their colour/mode  all at once.

PRG files can be loaded as any binary file, the two byte load address will be detected and skipped.

I don't think I added a specific ".PRG" filter but you can just use the "Any file (*.*)" filter to see PRG files.

Hi,

Thank you very much for your purchase, your support is greatly appreciated.

On the Commodore 64,  "multi-colour text mode"  allows both hi-res and multi-colour (wide) pixel chars, the choice is made using the colour value in each screen matrix cell (ie. the relevant Colour RAM byte), 

Colours 0-7 make the cell "hi-res" and colours 8-15 make the cell multi-colour.

So in CharPad, to make characters appear in "text - multi-colour mode"...

1. Choose "Text - Multi-colour mode" on the Project form..

2. Select "Colour Matrix (low nyb)" on the Project form.

3. Choose any colour on the bottom row of the colour palette (these will have red dashes on them to indicate "wide pixel").

It has always worked this way and always will, there is nothing to fix.

Ps. "multi-colour bitmap mode" works differently, all chars are wide pixel. 

Cheers.

Hi, 

Ok yes I see your point, that sounds like it would be a useful feature, request noted!

Hello, I'm not a Linux user myself but I know that many people do run our tools using WINE on Linux.

Conversely, I have not heard of any particular problems with it.

If you are capable of installing Linux and WINE then you shouldn't have any problems running the Win32 or Win64 versions of our tools.

To run the .NET version(s) you would probably just need to install .NET (3.5 and 4.0) into your WINE installation.

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback and the bug report, I have saved a copy of your post and will look into these things.

Yes the size of a tile-set is currently limited to 65536 and a char-set is limited to 500,000, allowing more tiles would be simple enough, although the CTM project file format only supports 16-bit values (max 65536) for both chars and tiles, so you would still need to reduce the count before a project could be saved.

Was the bug you found seen when doing a binary file import of map data?

Anyway, I will try and look into these things before the next release.

Cheers!

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, yes including asm code examples is something I have considered before and I have large amounts of code that I could include with the apps.

Part of the reason I haven't is that I don't want to deprive users of the pleasure of discovering how to do these things for themselves.

Writing code and finding good ways of doing things should be exciting and fun and educational, not just an exercise in copying and pasting somebody else's code.

As for your colour data problem, the "charset_attrib_L1" data IS the per-char colour data, the upper nybbles may also contain material data which you may or may not not need.

If you decompress the project so the charset contains 1000 chars (for a full-screen bitmap), then the charset data IS your bitmap data and the map data is not needed.

The chars just need loading/copying to your 8K bitmap and the L1 attribute data (1000 bytes) just needs to be loaded/copied to the colour matrix at $d800.

For a MC bitmap, the L2 attribute data (1000 bytes) will need to be loaded/copied to the screen matrix.

I hope that helps.

Hi

Yes there are lots of ways to move chars around such as using Cut, Copy, Paste, Swap, Reverse Order, Cycle Order.

The Paste function has 3 versions (insert, overwrite, append) depeding on how you want to do it.

You can swap any two characters by selecting one and then selecting another with CTRL held.

Have a look in the "Chars" menu when the Char Set form is active for all the options.

Just a note to readers that the reported issues with the anti-piracy system have been resolved with the most recent (CharPad 3.60) release.

Just a note to readers that the reported issues with the anti-piracy system have been resolved with the most recent (CharPad 3.60) release.

Thank you for your appreciation of our work! 

Compliments are rarer than you might imagine and yes tools like this don't just fall out of the sky as some would like to believe.

These things have taken years of effort and perseverance through every real-life trial imaginable (well, ok, many of them).

So I have saved your full post and will take a good close look at all the points you raised in due course, I had doubts about the palette myself some months back but felt like nobody was buying/using it anyway.

So, best of luck with Stunt Car Racer, a classic, I think I only played it on Amiga, that's got to be a tough coding job on the 8-bits, I will defo keep an eye out for it.

 Cheers!

Hey, thank you so much for supporting us!

Sorry you are having problems, you are not the only one, we have had to build in some aniti-piracy features and the greying out is meant to last for only 15 seconds until certain checks have been performed.

Are you seeing any popups about "Evidence of piracy?"

Hi,

If the save/export options are greyed out then that is the anti-piracy system doing it's thing,  make sure you are running it from it's original folder and not just running the exe moved somewhere else.

The flexi-grid options are on a second tab marked "Misc" on the project form.

If you ARE running it from it's original folder (with all the pre-packaged files) then you may need to email me for further instructions as I cant post a solution here for obvious reasons.

nb. you may need to wait 15 seconds after starting it for the save/export options to become ungreyed.

Hi, thank you for the positive words :)

Yes it was very much designed with ease of use and enjoyment in mind, especially regarding tile editing which has been a tedious chore in basically all tools until we made this.

Ok so your first suggestion is already handled by.. Import/Export.. Text/Asm.. Export Char Usage Statistics.

Your other ideas seem perfectly reasonable too, I have added them to the list.

Cheers!

Yeah that's CharPad 3.42, if i remember rightly the W32/W64 versions worked fine without the 0.02 update bit!

So only CharPad 3.42 (.NET version) is actually marked as such.

Either that or I just forgot to update the About boxes for W32/W64.

All versions will have received all the (important) necessary work for the update.

zip for 3.50 added.