TURBU

Well, it’s been a while, but I’ve made several improvements to the map editor since the last post.  I’ll have a new update ready in a few days.  It adds the ability to edit map properties, add new maps, and delete existing maps.  I’ve got a couple issues with setting up the project on other systems to take care of, but once that’s ready I’ll get the new installer ready.

There was a problem under Windows XP where the editor panes wouldn’t redraw themselves if you dragged another window over them.  I managed to trace that down to a glitch in SDL, and I patched it.  So the installer’s been updated once again.

Well, I found the two bugs that had been reported.  One was in a Delphi library that I hadn’t updated in a while, and the update had a fix.  The other was in SDL, which I had just updated, and the update contained the bug, so I patched it.  Then I went to test it and found every programmer’s nightmare: a bug that only happened when the debugger was turned off!

It took me most of the rest of the day to slowly, carefully track that one down, but I finally found it in some old file-reading code I had written a few years ago.  I fixed it, and now everything seems to be working properly.  (I hope!)  So now the download link for the installer is up again.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

I’ve gotten a few reports that the latest version doesn’t work right on Windows XP, and I’ve been able to reproduce the problem at my end.  So until I manage to get it fixed, I’ve disabled the download link.  It should be back fairly soon.

Well, it took a little bit longer than I thought it would to get the details worked out, but the TURBU Editor is now able to actually edit maps!  I’ve got a working map tree, which will take you to any map in the project, and let you edit either the lower or the upper layer.

For the moment, there’s no way to create new maps, delete maps from the project, or access and change map properties.  That’s coming up in the next release, which will hopefully be sometime before the end of next week.  (The Thanksgiving holiday will give me plenty of free time to work on it!)  But for now, the map editor can be found at the Downloads page.

There’s a new installer posted in the downloads section.  I’ve spent the last several months working on getting the map viewing functionality working, and now I’ve finally got something to show for it.  Now when you import a project, it will display the first map of the project in the map window, and the tile palette off to the side.  I don’t have the map tree set up yet, so you can’t switch between maps, and there’s no way to select tiles and place them on the map.  That’s all coming in the next update.  This one has been purely functional:  write the code to make a map display properly.

I’ve written this to use the actual TURBU default map engine in the editor window.  The same code that will run the game is generating the map for you to scroll around in.  It’s controlled with an extra “design interface” layer of code added over the top of it, which allows you to do all the map-editing stuff, but underneath that is the real game engine, which means that when I get a bit more done, designers will be able to test-run the game inside the editor instead of having to launch a separate program.

I’ve also updated the source code repository on Google Code, and the project requirements with it.  The new Delphi 2010 version contains some great new features and TURBU is going to make use of a few of them, so you need 2010 to compile it now.  It’s a bit on the expensive side, priced out of range of most students and hobbyists, but there’s been a lot of discussion in the Delphi community in the last few weeks about getting a low-cost or even free edition released so more people can use it.  I’m advocating and arguing strongly for a free edition on par with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Express.  Thankfully, things seem to be heading in the right direction.  Michael Rozlog, the Delphi project manager, recently stated that producing a more affordable edition “is a very, and I do mean a very important area of discussion. I FULLY agree with the need for low-cost-point entry products.”  So we’ll see what happens.

Another update will be coming soon.

The site was down for several hours last night due to some technical problems with my WordPress installation. I’ve gotten it fixed now, and hopefully we won’t see any more of that.

Now if I could just get some other technical problems resolved, ones in my graphics system, I’d get the next update to the editor ready and post it on here…

The map-converting code is ready and working. There’s not much that can be done with it just yet, since I don’t have any code for converting RPG Maker’s tilesets or actually displaying the map in the editor. That’s what I’m working on right now, and I’ll post an update once that’s working. (more…)

There really hasn’t been anything interesting for anyone to do with TURBU lately.  That’s about to change.  I’m currently building the map conversion logic for the project importer and starting to work on the map engine.  I should have a basic map editor working within a few weeks, which will allow users to play around with terrain.  That was basically how the original map viewer got started: it would display the map, and that’s it.  And then I started gradually adding in new features as quickly as I could code them, until you had a (almost) fully functional map engine.  Hopefully it’ll go a lot faster this time, since I’ve learned a lot in the past couple years and I’ve still got the original code, most of which can be reused or adapted.

Also, a big Delphi update just got released last week.  The latest version contained a feature called Generics, which lets you write code that can be used to do lots of very similar tasks with minor variations much more easily.  Unfortunately, it was badly broken and didn’t work very well.  The update fixed the Generics issues, which means I can set up a lot of new features more quickly. 😀