SOSs report

»SOS · June 5, 2006

Take the v121 of DCME. Add SOS. And you have this. A big juicy issue and comment report (mostly about the UI)

Wait, why is the zip named v121? Isn't it supposed to be v1.2.1? Issue number one! Heheheh, yea. We have had filesystems that handle file names over 8 characters and *even spaces in filenames* for quite a few years now, so it would be nice to have a zip that looks good. "DCME v1.2.1.zip", for example.

To business. As I start it up, I notice a tip of the day window.

* You do not "OK" the window, you "Close" it! ("OK" is bad button text)

* It is not centered. Please try to remember that not everyone uses 1024x768. (Speaking of that, I can barely fit my code on my screen at 1280x960! It must be !@#$%^&* with that low res for you...)

As for the whole tip of the day concept... it can be useful, especially when screen real estate is tight. Depends on what you stick in there. Let's see what is in there...

You can have a quick goto window if you right-click on the radar.

Nooo, you don't have windows, you use them to do something. This tip is good, since it is a hidden feature, but the wording is bad. Better would be "You can quickly go to specific coordinates by right clicking on the radar."

Pressing CTRL when using pencil switches your current tool to the dropper.

It is easier on the eyes to call the button Control rather than CTRL, even though it really is called Ctrl on most keyboards Also, pressing does not change the tool, the tool is active only when the button is held down. Also, no need to over-emphasize the key with caps - it's not very liekly the user will miss it here. So: "Holding down Control when using the pencil tool activates the dropper tool." More on the actual feature later.

You can select multiple tiles at once in the tileset (as long as they don't contain the special tiles such as wormhole, space station and large asteroid).

WTF! COOL FEATURE! I had no idea it existed

This tip text is fine

Ah, wait, it is missing a period at the end

You can quickly switch the left and right selected tiles by pressing the arrow between the 2 tiles above the tileset

* Two tiles, not 2 tiles. Numbers up to ten should always be spelled out or they'll look ugly as !@#$%^&*.

* "Switch" does not mean the same thing as "Swap".

* "Selected tiles" makes me think of map selections.

* Missing period at the end.

* The arrow is not a physical object you can press. You can only click it.

I'd make it be "You can swap the tiles !@#$%^&*igned to the left and right mouse buttons by clicking on the arrow between the two selected tiles."

Pressing SHIFT gives you a square when drawing a rectangle, a circle while drawing an ellipse, or straight lines while drawing lines

* Missing period at the end.

* You hold down the key to do this. Just pressing it does very little.

* Also, every line drawn with the line tool is straight! Heheh, perhaps it constrains to 45-degree angles?

I'd say: "Holding down the Shift key constrains rectangles to squares, ellipses to circles and lines to 45o angles." (With o being the degree sign)

I feel like a newspaper editor Writing the explanations for these corrections is tiring... I'll simply correct them and you just let me know if you want the explanation for anything.

Pressing CTRL while drawing rectangles, ellipses or lines will use the origin tile as center point for the rectangle,ellipse or line.

"Holding down the Control key will center shape tools at the drawing origin."

You can set bookmarks to quickly jump to a position on the map. Use SHIFT+ 0-9 to set a bookmark on the current place, and recall the bookmark by pressing 0-9.

"You can bookmark locations on the map by pressing Shift + 0-9 and jump to those locations by pressing simply the number.

PTM or Picture To Map easily lets you convert the pixels of a picture to the tiles of a map, if you draw a layout of a base it can convert the pixels in the picture to the selected tile from the tileset on the map.

"The Picture to Map (PTM) feature enables you to convert an images to tiles on the map. For example, if you draw the layout of a base it can convert the image to the actual base and place it on the map."

With TTM or Text To Map you can add text in the form of tiles on the map, easy if you want to have some text in the radar.

"The Text to Map (TTM) feature enables you to add big areas of text composed of tiles to the map."

When using 'Draw Under' , you will draw, move, or paste tiles under existing tiles. It can be useful if you want to add overlay parts to your base

"When "Draw Under" is activated, any existing tiles will not be affected by drawing - it will all be done "behind" existing tiles."(Note: double quotes - single quotes is British style)

When using 'Transparent Selection' , empty tiles of a selection will be ignored.

"When "Transparent Selection" is activated, tiles that are empty will never be selected."

You can hide the right bar where the tileset and radar is in to maximize the view of your map by clicking the '->' button.

"You can hide the sidebar by clicking the "->" button."

You can customize all the grid colors, and grid sections in the options.

"You can custimize the grid lines in the preferences dialog."

You can open up to 10 maps simultaneously.

Useless knowledge - drop the tip.

You can assign .LVL files to DCME from the options menu. When !@#$%^&*igned, double-clicking any .LVL file will open it automatically in DCME.

"You can make all Subspace level files (.lvl) automatically open with DCME by !@#$%^&*igning DCME to open them in the options menu."

Easily move the map by using the arrow keys.

"You can move the map with the arrow keys."

There are a few shortcut keys to swap between tools: H hand, P pencil, E eraser, S selection, D dropper, Z zoom, F bucket, L line, R recangle, O ellipse, I sticky line, A airbrush.

This should actually be in a dialog accessible from the help menu.

But as a tip, it would be better as:

"Tool shortcuts:

H - hand

P - pencil" and so on with everything on a new line. This is not a very good tip, better do a dialog of it and a tip saying "To see all the shortcut keys, select the "Shortcut Keys" item in the Help menu."

There are 3 different sizes: small, medium and large. All tools can use it where appropiate (so not bucket, dropper, zoom, selection or hand tools).

"You can select three different pencil sizes by using the buttons above the tileset."

The size for airbrush is the area where to spray in.

Rather useless. Drop it.

Ok, that's all the tips now I'm tired...

Now, for all other issues.

The "Jump to" dialog has a neat minimap - I like However, it seems like there is no way to cancel the jump (well, there is - click the X - but that's not good enough). Also, you're not really "Okaying" the dialog, you're "Jumping" to coordinates (aka "OK" for button text is not optimal).

* The "Rightmost three" icons are exclusive... why?! The middle one (draw-behind) is completely separate functionality. Also, for some odd reason, "Do not select empty" becomes enabled when it is. They are separate features, really, so this is just wrong.

* I still cannot see the coordinates of my selections!

* Holding down Control for dropper is good, but why only pencil and fill tools? I want it for all of them!

* Dragging for multi-tile select in the tileset only works in the down-right direction, but not going up or right.

* Control+A to select all visible tiles could be useful.

* The first map is called Un!@#$%^&*led and the next one is Un!@#$%^&*led1? Sets of U and U2 or U1 and U2 would be better.

* Disabling of selection-needing menu items has apparently broken. Hmm... actually, it seems like it considers a 0x0 selection a "selection", as well.

* You shouldn't be able to copy or cut when nothing is selected.

* "Convert selection to walltiles" has incorrect capitalization.

* "Use grid" and "Use tile numbers" are badly worded. You don't "Use" them, you "Show" them. So, "Show X" is better.

* The "count tiles" dialog has the lower edges of the buttons cut off...

* Moving selection around has gotten a LOT slower. This does not look good at all. Too slow to use. Needs reworking for sure.

* The preferences dialog... it's just ugly! Uneven spacing and all. Things should have equal spacing on the left and right (groupboxes) and the captionless groupbox deserves a caption, as well ("General"?). Also, the buttons are too close to the lower edge.

* Preferences checkboxes use inconsistent capitalization. Pick one style and stay with it

* The pref dialog crashed DCME when I entered "1" into the uppermost grid textbox...

* Err... hah! You have your X and Y axes messed up in the grid options -_-

* What is a "Block" and a "Section"? These are too ambigous. Whichever is the A1-type one might be better called "Sector".

* Grid options: it is "0 tiles", not "0 tile".

* Buttons in pref are missing &accelerators.

* "Allow bla bla" check all/uncheck all should be a button. Or two buttons, actually!

* Walltiles dialog is pretty much OK, except the buttons are too small. Stick with the standard sizes.

* How about placing a button to access this on the toolbar, mm'kay?

* Some inconsistent button capitalization in there "Clear all".

* The "Swap tiles" arrow does not work

* The dialog name is not consistent with the menu item name. (Create vs Edit)

* Convert selection to WT works even with the default blank WT sets. It shouldn't, really.

* Also, I think presenting a dialog with the 8 sets (like the one on the right in the edit dialog) is much better than using the currently selected one (and saying a messagebox for not-walltile-selected is especially ungood).

* The "Wanna save" dialog at closing time says "wanna close first?". First? Well, I would rather close third! It should say "before exiting" or "before closing" if just one map is being closed.

I didn't actually get to test much functionality since this took me well over an hour to do. Meh, just respond and fix and let me do the next batch soon

PS. Wth is wrong with the quote tags...

**Samapico** · June 5, 2006

Okayyyy, let's start with the first chunk (the tips thing and everything else before these is fixed)

We have had filesystems that handle file names over 8 characters and *even spaces in filenames* for quite a few years now, so it would be nice to have a zip that looks good. "DCME v1.2.1.zip", for example.

SSforum converts spaces to u_n_d_e_r_s_c_o_r_e_s though.. but.. yeh

* The "Rightmost three" icons are exclusive... why?! The middle one (draw-behind) is completely separate functionality. Also, for some odd reason, "Do not select empty" becomes enabled when it is. They are separate features, really, so this is just wrong.

Actually, they are not really separate... When you're Drawing Under, it also applies to the selection... that means a moved selection will be moved UNDER existing tiles, this is why the empty tiles are also being ignored (but the "transparent" does not get selected).

* I still cannot see the coordinates of my selections!

err.. but I made current selection's size more obvious already..... hmm i'll re-add 'from' and 'to' coords for selection before the size I guess

* Holding down Control for dropper is good, but why only pencil and fill tools? I want it for all of them!

Holding down the Control key will center shape tools at the drawing origin.

Does that answer your question?

* Dragging for multi-tile select in the tileset only works in the down-right direction' date=' but not going up or right.[/quote']True.. adding to the 'to-do eventually' list

* Control+A to select all visible tiles could be useful.
Interesting ; might be a pain when zoomed far back though

* The first map is called Un!@#$%^&*led and the next one is Un!@#$%^&*led1? Sets of U and U2 or U1 and U2 would be better.
Done

* Disabling of selection-needing menu items has apparently broken. Hmm... actually, it seems like it considers a 0x0 selection a "selection", as well.
0x0? I know that 1x1 selections do... and since selecting is inclusive-inclusive, as soon as u click with the selection tool, it creates a 1x1 selection. However, there might be some cases where DCME still thinks a selection is active when there's not, like when you cancel the drawing of a selection by right-clicking.

* You shouldn't be able to copy or cut when nothing is selected.
Fixed
* "Convert selection to walltiles" has incorrect capitalization.
Fixed
* "Use grid" and "Use tile numbers" are badly worded. You don't "Use" them, you "Show" them. So, "Show X" is better.
Fixed
* The "count tiles" dialog has the lower edges of the buttons cut off...
Fixed

* Moving selection around has gotten a LOT slower. This does not look good at all. Too slow to use. Needs reworking for sure.
Yep... got to agree with you there Having trouble with its preview at pixel level too

----------------PART2
* The preferences dialog... it's just ugly! Uneven spacing and all. Things should have equal spacing on the left and right (groupboxes) and the captionless groupbox deserves a caption, as well ("General"?). Also, the buttons are too close to the lower edge.
* Preferences checkboxes use inconsistent capitalization. Pick one style and stay with it smile.gif
done

* The pref dialog crashed DCME when I entered "1" into the uppermost grid textbox...
lol.. stupid bug.. fixed

* Err... hah! You have your X and Y axes messed up in the grid options sleep.gif
hmmm... i dunno... i think i'll just rename X-axis to Horizontal and Y-axis to Vertical its kinda confusing now

* What is a "Block" and a "Section"? These are too ambigous. Whichever is the A1-type one might be better called "Sector".
hmm... might as well get rid of one
Blocks appear each X tiles, while Section lines appear each X blocks.. I agree the names arent too clear, but I just dont know how to call them Sectors and Large Sectors would be clear enough I guess...

* Grid options: it is "0 tiles", not "0 tile".
done

* Buttons in pref are missing &accelerators.
?

* "Allow bla bla" check all/uncheck all should be a button. Or two buttons, actually!
bleh i had trouble with that one... but anyways its useless with the upcoming walltiles, so it will be removed

* Walltiles dialog is pretty much OK, except the buttons are too small. Stick with the standard sizes.
done

* How about placing a button to access this on the toolbar, mm'kay?
there is one?

* Some inconsistent button capitalization in there "Clear all".
ez

* The "Swap tiles" arrow does not work sad.gif
if you were talking about the one in Switch/Replace Tiles form, i just fixed

* The dialog name is not consistent with the menu item name. (Create vs Edit)
fixed

Take the v121 of DCME. Add SOS. And you have this. A big juicy issue and comment report (mostly about the UI) smile.gif

Wait, why is the zip named v121? Isn't it supposed to be v1.2.1? Issue number one! Heheheh, yea. We have had filesystems that handle file names over 8 characters and *even spaces in filenames* for quite a few years now, so it would be nice to have a zip that looks good. "DCME v1.2.1.zip", for example.

To business. As I start it up, I notice a tip of the day window.
* You do not "OK" the window, you "Close" it! ("OK" is bad button text)
* It is not centered. Please try to remember that not everyone uses 1024x768. (Speaking of that, I can barely fit my code on my screen at 1280x960! It must be !@#$%^&* with that low res for you...)

As for the whole tip of the day concept... it can be useful, especially when screen real estate is tight. Depends on what you stick in there. Let's see what is in there...

You can have a quick goto window if you right-click on the radar.

Nooo, you don't have windows, you use them to do something. This tip is good, since it is a hidden feature, but the wording is bad. Better would be "You can quickly go to specific coordinates by right clicking on the radar."

Pressing CTRL when using pencil switches your current tool to the dropper.
It is easier on the eyes to call the button Control rather than CTRL, even though it really is called Ctrl on most keyboards tongue.gif Also, pressing does not change the tool, the tool is active only when the button is held down. Also, no need to over-emphasize the key with caps - it's not very liekly the user will miss it here. So: "Holding down Control when using the pencil tool activates the dropper tool." More on the actual feature later.

You can select multiple tiles at once in the tileset (as long as they don't contain the special tiles such as wormhole, space station and large asteroid).

WTF! COOL FEATURE! I had no idea it existed biggrin.gif This tip text is fine smile.gif Ah, wait, it is missing a period at the end tongue.gif

You can quickly switch the left and right selected tiles by pressing the arrow between the 2 tiles above the tileset
* Two tiles, not 2 tiles. Numbers up to ten should always be spelled out or they'll look ugly as !@#$%^&*.
* "Switch" does not mean the same thing as "Swap".
* "Selected tiles" makes me think of map selections.
* Missing period at the end.
* The arrow is not a physical object you can press. You can only click it.
I'd make it be "You can swap the tiles !@#$%^&*igned to the left and right mouse buttons by clicking on the arrow between the two selected tiles."

Pressing SHIFT gives you a square when drawing a rectangle, a circle while drawing an ellipse, or straight lines while drawing lines

* Missing period at the end.
* You hold down the key to do this. Just pressing it does very little.
* Also, every line drawn with the line tool is straight! Heheh, perhaps it constrains to 45-degree angles? wink.gif
I'd say: "Holding down the Shift key constrains rectangles to squares, ellipses to circles and lines to 45o angles." (With o being the degree sign)

I feel like a newspaper editor biggrin.gif Writing the explanations for these corrections is tiring... I'll simply correct them and you just let me know if you want the explanation for anything.

Pressing CTRL while drawing rectangles, ellipses or lines will use the origin tile as center point for the rectangle,ellipse or line.
"Holding down the Control key will center shape tools at the drawing origin."

You can set bookmarks to quickly jump to a position on the map. Use SHIFT+ 0-9 to set a bookmark on the current place, and recall the bookmark by pressing 0-9.

"You can bookmark locations on the map by pressing Shift + 0-9 and jump to those locations by pressing simply the number.

PTM or Picture To Map easily lets you convert the pixels of a picture to the tiles of a map, if you draw a layout of a base it can convert the pixels in the picture to the selected tile from the tileset on the map.
"The Picture to Map (PTM) feature enables you to convert an images to tiles on the map. For example, if you draw the layout of a base it can convert the image to the actual base and place it on the map."

With TTM or Text To Map you can add text in the form of tiles on the map, easy if you want to have some text in the radar.

"The Text to Map (TTM) feature enables you to add big areas of text composed of tiles to the map."

When using 'Draw Under' , you will draw, move, or paste tiles under existing tiles. It can be useful if you want to add overlay parts to your base
"When "Draw Under" is activated, any existing tiles will not be affected by drawing - it will all be done "behind" existing tiles."(Note: double quotes - single quotes is British style)

When using 'Transparent Selection' , empty tiles of a selection will be ignored.

"When "Transparent Selection" is activated, tiles that are empty will never be selected."

You can hide the right bar where the tileset and radar is in to maximize the view of your map by clicking the '->' button.
"You can hide the sidebar by clicking the "->" button."

You can customize all the grid colors, and grid sections in the options.

"You can custimize the grid lines in the preferences dialog."

You can open up to 10 maps simultaneously.
Useless knowledge - drop the tip.

You can assign .LVL files to DCME from the options menu. When !@#$%^&*igned, double-clicking any .LVL file will open it automatically in DCME.

"You can make all Subspace level files (.lvl) automatically open with DCME by !@#$%^&*igning DCME to open them in the options menu."

Easily move the map by using the arrow keys.
"You can move the map with the arrow keys."

There are a few shortcut keys to swap between tools: H hand, P pencil, E eraser, S selection, D dropper, Z zoom, F bucket, L line, R recangle, O ellipse, I sticky line, A airbrush.

This should actually be in a dialog accessible from the help menu.

But as a tip, it would be better as:

"Tool shortcuts:
H - hand
P - pencil" and so on with everything on a new line. This is not a very good tip, better do a dialog of it and a tip saying "To see all the shortcut keys, select the "Shortcut Keys" item in the Help menu."

There are 3 different sizes: small, medium and large. All tools can use it where appropiate (so not bucket, dropper, zoom, selection or hand tools).
"You can select three different pencil sizes by using the buttons above the tileset."

The size for airbrush is the area where to spray in.

Rather useless. Drop it.

Ok, that's all the tips now smile.gif I'm tired...

Now, for all other issues.

The "Jump to" dialog has a neat minimap - I like smile.gif However, it seems like there is no way to cancel the jump (well, there is - click the X - but that's not good enough). Also, you're not really "Okaying" the dialog, you're "Jumping" to coordinates (aka "OK" for button text is not optimal).

* The "Rightmost three" icons are exclusive... why?! The middle one (draw-behind) is completely separate functionality. Also, for some odd reason, "Do not select empty" becomes enabled when it is. They are separate features, really, so this is just wrong.
* I still cannot see the coordinates of my selections!
* Holding down Control for dropper is good, but why only pencil and fill tools? I want it for all of them!
* Dragging for multi-tile select in the tileset only works in the down-right direction, but not going up or right.
* Control+A to select all visible tiles could be useful.
* The first map is called Un!@#$%^&*led and the next one is Un!@#$%^&*led1? Sets of U and U2 or U1 and U2 would be better.
* Disabling of selection-needing menu items has apparently broken. Hmm... actually, it seems like it considers a 0x0 selection a "selection", as well.
* You shouldn't be able to copy or cut when nothing is selected.
* "Convert selection to walltiles" has incorrect capitalization.
* "Use grid" and "Use tile numbers" are badly worded. You don't "Use" them, you "Show" them. So, "Show X" is better.
* The "count tiles" dialog has the lower edges of the buttons cut off...
* Moving selection around has gotten a LOT slower. This does not look good at all. Too slow to use. Needs reworking for sure.

* The preferences dialog... it's just ugly! Uneven spacing and all. Things should have equal spacing on the left and right (groupboxes) and the captionless groupbox deserves a caption, as well ("General"?). Also, the buttons are too close to the lower edge.
* Preferences checkboxes use inconsistent capitalization. Pick one style and stay with it smile.gif
* The pref dialog crashed DCME when I entered "1" into the uppermost grid textbox...
* Err... hah! You have your X and Y axes messed up in the grid options sleep.gif
* What is a "Block" and a "Section"? These are too ambigous. Whichever is the A1-type one might be better called "Sector".
* Grid options: it is "0 tiles", not "0 tile".
* Buttons in pref are missing &accelerators.
* "Allow bla bla" check all/uncheck all should be a button. Or two buttons, actually!

* Walltiles dialog is pretty much OK, except the buttons are too small. Stick with the standard sizes.
* How about placing a button to access this on the toolbar, mm'kay?
* Some inconsistent button capitalization in there "Clear all".
* The "Swap tiles" arrow does not work sad.gif
* The dialog name is not consistent with the menu item name. (Create vs Edit)

* Convert selection to WT works even with the default blank WT sets. It shouldn't, really.
* Also, I think presenting a dialog with the 8 sets (like the one on the right in the edit dialog) is much better than using the currently selected one (and saying a messagebox for not-walltile-selected is especially ungood).
I'll put that on the todo list for now

* The "Wanna save" dialog at closing time says "wanna close first?". First? Well, I would rather close third! wink.gif It should say "before exiting" or "before closing" if just one map is being closed.
to-do'ed

i'm hungry

and i don't know whats wrong with the quote tags either :S it suckz

i'm surprised you didnt talk about the About... window saying its v1.2.3 or something like that

anyways... thanks a bunch for that SOS

v1.2.2 will include most of these fixes.... for functionnality test, I suggest you use what I'll attach here... it is compiled with french vb, but there are lots of updates on the functionnality, especially walltiles ; just so you don't waste time writing about things that are already fixed
selection should be a bit faster too, but dont expect ssme-like speed (i hate to say that )
edit: (obsolete attachment removed)

Edited June 15, 2006 by Samapico

»SOS · June 5, 2006

!@#$%^&*it, what is this forum doing with the quotes. It's !@#$%^&* trying to understand who said what

»SOS · June 5, 2006

* The "Rightmost three" icons are exclusive... why?! The middle one (draw-behind) is completely separate functionality. Also, for some odd reason, "Do not select empty" becomes enabled when it is. They are separate features, really, so this is just wrong.
Actually, they are not really separate... When you're Drawing Under, it also applies to the selection... that means a moved selection will be moved UNDER existing tiles, this is why the empty tiles are also being ignored (but the "transparent" does not get selected).

True, you are right in part, but it still is a confusing feature. Maybe to phrase it better - the problem is that the selection is displayed visually as the ignore-empty one when the ignore-empty feature is not selected. Yes, empty tiles have no effect, but still, the user has not activated the "ignore empty" so the normal selection logic should be applied (visually. I know there's no difference in the result).

err.. but I made current selection's size more obvious already..... hmm i'll re-add 'from' and 'to' coords for selection before the size I guess

You did? Hmm, ah I see the size. Found it! But you know what the problem is? It dissappears when the mouse is released! Bad thing. It should stay.

And yes, To coordinates would be nice to have, as well.

* Holding down Control for dropper is good, but why only pencil and fill tools? I want it for all of them!
Holding down the Control key will center shape tools at the drawing origin.
Does that answer your question?

Oh! Well' date=' no, it doesn't! It just means you have picked bad shortcuts [img']http://www.ssforum.net/public/style_emoticons/default/blum.gif[/img] Pick something else. Control+Alt seems unused so far, no?

* Disabling of selection-needing menu items has apparently broken. Hmm... actually, it seems like it considers a 0x0 selection a "selection", as well.
0x0? I know that 1x1 selections do... and since selecting is inclusive-inclusive, as soon as u click with the selection tool, it creates a 1x1 selection. However, there might be some cases where DCME still thinks a selection is active when there's not, like when you cancel the drawing of a selection by right-clicking.

No, actually, it only creates a selection when you drag. But if you just click, it seems to do some weird "there is a selection, but there really isn't" thing and activates the menus (as far as I can tell so far), which I !@#$%^&*umed was a 0x0 selection.

* Err... hah! You have your X and Y axes messed up in the grid options sleep.gif
hmmm... i dunno... i think i'll just rename X-axis to Horizontal and Y-axis to Vertical its kinda confusing now

True, that would be even better.

* What is a "Block" and a "Section"? These are too ambigous. Whichever is the A1-type one might be better called "Sector".
hmm... might as well get rid of one
Blocks appear each X tiles, while Section lines appear each X blocks.. I agree the names arent too clear, but I just dont know how to call them Sectors and Large Sectors would be clear enough I guess...

Oh, so that's what they are Yea, Large Sectors would be clearer indeed.

* Buttons in pref are missing &accelerators.
?

The & character, you know? The little line below a certain letter Lets you do alt+G and stuff when you write &great.

* How about placing a button to access this on the toolbar, mm'kay?
there is one?

Ahaha, you're right But place it to the right, please - closer to the tileset and other tiling stuff

* The "Swap tiles" arrow does not work sad.gif
if you were talking about the one in Switch/Replace Tiles form, i just fixed

No, the walltiles form.

Ok, I'll take a look at the file you posted tomorrow.

If you can't make it speed up, maybe I can help with some design suggestions. I don't know VB but I could probably tell you how to do it faster if you explain to me how DCME is doing it right now and all that. VB is not very easy on my eyes, so I'd rather not try to decipher the code Let's talk in SS or MSN or whatever if you want.

**Samapico** · June 5, 2006

im not on ss much anymore... so msn - samapico hat hotmail dawt come

err.. quotes are only not working in this topic... rest of forum is fine

**Drake7707** · June 5, 2006

there are prolly too many quotes o_O". Thats one !@#$%^&* of a report . Nice

VB is easier than c++ imo, it does a lot on its own. (which makes it a bit slower). And there are a lot of optimizations yet to be done.

Still learning for finals so i won't be able to change much until 1st july

»SOS · June 6, 2006

Hmm, I thought I posted something here. I guess I didn't.

Anyway... meh VB is indeed easier than C++. Of course C# rules it all But since this is already in VB6... meh, what can one do

Some more stuff I noticed:

* TOTD sometimes gives the same tips twice in a row.

* I got an index oor error by dragging the mouse outside the map (I guess it was outside. Not sure) when zoomed out a few levels.

* Woah, it sure is not optimized 17k PFs per second when dragging a very large selection when zoomed out o_O You really should work a bit on this part. Too bad about those finals, drake

* You have a huge memory leak somewhere. Map resources are not released when a map is closed, it seems. Maybe your huge drawing surfaces? Or the tile data? Or maybe VB6 just manages memory weird... nah, can't be that. It went over 600 MB. Exactly 10 MB per map, it would seem.

* Edit walltiles dialog is not centered.

* Edit walltiles has bad spacing now - not enough space between some things and unevenness with the grpbox.

* Same up-right-no-work selection problem in edit walltiles.

* Edit walltiles dialog shows default tileset first time you open it!

* Sometimes DCME does not close - the window closes, but DCME itself stays resident in memory. Some hidden windows not being destroyed? So far, no idea when it does this.

* Walltiles in the edit walltiles dialog are ordered 1, 5, 2, 6 and so on (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), which is not too logical. 1, 2, 3, 4 is better. (aka right now it goes top to bottom first)

* Convert selection to WT could use a kb shortcut.

* Convert selection to WT only converts tiles of the same type (which is good, but if/when you do a window where you ask "Which Walltile set to use?", you should explain that only tiles from that set will be matched Walltiles) but it "sees" other tiles as "donor tiles", as well. Sometimes. I'm not sure what is going on but something is messed up with the algorithm. It seems like it only sees false donor tiles down and to the right. Yea, that's it.

* I just love the hover preview

* A selection should un-float if you draw (or perhaps only if you draw over it? Yea, that might be for the best), otherwise it gets confusing since the tiles drawn below it dissappear.

* Also, nevermind what I said about the three selection-mode buttons. I've come to rather like how it is

* Control+D to deselect would be nice.

* Holding down Control with pencil leaves the hover preview of a tile visible.

**Samapico** · June 6, 2006

Hmm, I thought I posted something here. I guess I didn't.

Anyway... meh VB is indeed easier than C++. Of course C# rules it all But since this is already in VB6... meh, what can one do

Some more stuff I noticed:
* TOTD sometimes gives the same tips twice in a row.
fixified

* I got an index oor error by dragging the mouse outside the map (I guess it was outside. Not sure) when zoomed out a few levels.
i fixed many of these errors... i dont think it should happen anymore, you were probably using multiple tiles selected or larger linewidth

* Woah, it sure is not optimized 17k PFs per second when dragging a very large selection when zoomed out o_O You really should work a bit on this part. Too bad about those finals, drake
bleh

* You have a huge memory leak somewhere. Map resources are not released when a map is closed, it seems. Maybe your huge drawing surfaces? Or the tile data? Or maybe VB6 just manages memory weird... nah, can't be that. It went over 600 MB. Exactly 10 MB per map, it would seem.
yea... we'll work on that

* Edit walltiles dialog is not centered.
fixed

* Edit walltiles has bad spacing now - not enough space between some things and unevenness with the grpbox.
bleh

* Same up-right-no-work selection problem in edit walltiles.
thats now fixed and working purrrfectly (on main tileset too)

* Edit walltiles dialog shows default tileset first time you open it!
it doesnt for me Ã´.o ... i'll try to make some tests see if i can make that happen

* Sometimes DCME does not close - the window closes, but DCME itself stays resident in memory. Some hidden windows not being destroyed? So far, no idea when it does this.
i saw that happen too... will be worked on, but i have no idea how to fix that

* Walltiles in the edit walltiles dialog are ordered 1, 5, 2, 6 and so on (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), which is not too logical. 1, 2, 3, 4 is better. (aka right now it goes top to bottom first)
maybe

* Convert selection to WT could use a kb shortcut.

* Convert selection to WT only converts tiles of the same type (which is good, but if/when you do a window where you ask "Which Walltile set to use?", you should explain that only tiles from that set will be matched Walltiles) but it "sees" other tiles as "donor tiles", as well. Sometimes. I'm not sure what is going on but something is messed up with the algorithm. It seems like it only sees false donor tiles down and to the right. Yea, that's it.
im not sure in which state was 'convert selection to WT' in whatever version you have, but it works fine now. and it converts all the tiles (except special tiles) to walltiles (empty walltiles cannot be selected anymore)
as long as there is one tile set in the walltileset, the set is considered valid
- When it sees a tile, it checks around for existing tiles, then it chooses which walltile it should use
- If a walltile is defined for that possibility, it uses it
-If not, it just leaves the tile alone and doesnt change it

* I just love the hover preview

* A selection should un-float if you draw (or perhaps only if you draw over it? Yea, that might be for the best), otherwise it gets confusing since the tiles drawn below it dissappear.
eventually we want to make tools able to draw 'inside' the selection, thats why it stays that way for now

* Also, nevermind what I said about the three selection-mode buttons. I've come to rather like how it is
heh

* Control+D to deselect would be nice.
right-click is usually more useful me thinks

* Holding down Control with pencil leaves the hover preview of a tile visible.
ew..k.. that preview is being changed anyway... as it doesnt work with special tiles yet

**Drake7707** · June 6, 2006

the methods are getting cluttered again, once im done i should clean up everything, that's why its *a bit* slow. ehm.

omg just found a major bottleneck o_O", and one you expect the least.

in updatelevel at each tile the old forecolor is saved, then restored when a edge needs to be drawn (so it's white). I extracted that out of the for loop and i saved a whooping 300ms. (this only applies when a selection is active), which is about twice as fast (i had 600ms first)

The unnecessary or code that stays the same in the nested for loops are the main culprit in slowdowns, if you calculate them before the loops things speed up quite a lot.

updated repository with that fix

Tell me when i need to compile when you prepped up a new version (i think most downloads never reached more than 20 for a version lol)

Btw another "bug": flip/mirror while selecting a walltileset in the tileset doesn't auto-update the tiles to walltiles.

The Apache · June 7, 2006

jesus christ sos, stop being such a !@#$%^&*ing grammar !@#$%^&*.

»SOS · June 7, 2006

Don't try to play a software developer, apache -_-

**Samapico** · June 7, 2006

proper grammar is what makes a program look like a professional program

and.. 300ms you say? wow... just for storing / restoring a Long value... eeeeeew

(i think most downloads never reached more than 20 for a version lol)

but there are like 511 downloads of that old 1.07 version on SSDL

»SOS · June 7, 2006

Two feature requests:

* Switch/Replace tiles to support walltiles.

* Middle mouse button acts as hand tool.

And a bug:

* Fill only seems to work inside the selection o_O

* Delete button sometimes does nothing.

* Dragging with RMB causes the selection coordinates to light up when there is actually no selection appearing.

**Samapico** · June 7, 2006

switch / replace for walltiles was in my plans

middle mouse as hand.. i tried that, it didnt work.. but its in my plans as well

**Drake7707** · June 7, 2006

actually you stored it a few thousands of times, and accessing/modyfing the properties of controls is slow... so slow that they should be avoided in nested for loops

17k PFs per second

btw sos, what are PFs ?

edit: i did a working quote woo

»SOS · June 7, 2006

Page Faults (more or less equals memory accesses, in case you are unfamiliar with the term; one page is 4 KB and DCME accessed 17000 * 4 = 68000 KB = ~66 MB per second! Just for moving selection!)

I do now know how DCME's system works, although I do hear you talking about pictureboxes often. You're not re-drawing the entire thing every move, are you? Maybe tons of image data might account for this.

Also, a new bug:

* Sometimes when shift-selecting, the selected tiles simply dissappear! (And undo errored right after it. Not sure if it always errors afterwards, only tried once). Ah, it seems to be triggered by dragging with the magic wand tool.

* Also, on the occasion that the delete key works and deletes the selection, the radar is not updated.

* Single-column filled rectangle comes out wrong (3 columns)

PS. Omigod, how did you do that quote? o_O

Synister · June 7, 2006

Holy !@#$%^&*..

**Drake7707** · June 7, 2006

yes i know what page faults are, but didn't think of that as PF

and i have noooo idea how the !@#$%^&* it could get so high.

I know in move() you have at a certain point

dim newselection(1024,1024) as integer

which is 4mb

and then is set to the original to apply the move.

But that would mean it doesn't garbage collect when that function ends :s ( i never had that problem before tho).

Normally memory in use for dcme would only fluctuate with 4-5mb. Although, it allocates 4mb several times per second when you move tho

Is it always like that?

I hate sometime-errors, they are hard to reproduce and even harder to find

And yes, there is definetely wrong with the tileset, every time a map loads the tileset doesn't set its default value's anymore :s

**Drake7707** · June 8, 2006

and there is also a problem with removing selection parts on pixel level. The boundaries are sometimes incorrect which screws the selection pretty badly :/

(haven't got the time to find and fix the bugs )

»SOS · June 10, 2006

One more: sometimes it saves a completely black tileset! (I think it's an invalid BMP, actually. Anyway, it shows up totally black in DCME and Continuum).

Like this: xduel.zip

**Drake7707** · June 10, 2006

that would be a problem with !@#$%^&*igning a tileset to the map (it wouldn't be initialised that way, and everything would still be 0 thus black)

can you say the exact steps you did ?

»SOS · June 11, 2006

Well, first it happened when I just edited a map and saved it (no details).

But now when I try to import a tileset to this broken map, it also fails! Just open map, import tileset and save.

»SOS · June 12, 2006

Oh, and copy & paste between two opened maps does not work.

And opening a map when DCME is open (by double-clicking) causes DCME to give an index OOB error.

**Drake7707** · June 12, 2006

!@#$%^&* invasion of the bugs. must be because of the warm weather

»SOS · June 13, 2006

A few more things:

* Close all maps and click on the tileset. Weird things happen.

* There's no File->Close menu

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