BassAceGold's Blog

So my SD card finally has shipped from dealextreme. It took waaay longer than expected so this means I’ll be out of testing stuff (external ram stuff) on hardware for another week or two. But until then I have moved onto some other things that I can test out on emulators, the controls. Basically I have come up with a customizable control scheme which can be configured via the main ini file. Here is a layout with the description of the controls:

#——————Controls———————
#————Available control options———-
# * = no on screen controls, must be mapped or loss of functionality will occur

#ColSwap – switch color pals
#ColPicker – eye drop tool
#Colors *- show color menu
#Scroll *- scroll bg
#Pencil – pencil tool
#Eraser – eraser tool
#Bucket – bucket tool
#Text – text typing tool
#Square – filled square tool
#Square2 – unfilled square tool
#Circle – filled circle tool
#Circle2 – unfilled circle tool
#Line – line tool
#Marquis – selector tool

#Shoulder buttons
R_Button = ColSwap
L_Button = Colors
#Dpad buttons
Right_Dpad = Scroll
Left_Dpad = Pencil
Up_Dpad = Bucket
Down_Dpad = Square
#face buttons
A_Button = Line
B_Button = Undo
X_Button = Circle
Y_Button = Text

Start and Select will be reserved for menu stuff. Apart from that, the rest of the keys can be assigned a tool. With this system set up, it will be possible to add guitar grip support for extra keys if needed.

So basically how this works is, when you push a button, it will jump to the desired tool on the tool bar where you can configure it and use it as if you manually selected it via the tool bar. This is pretty handy as some tools require you to go through multiple levels of the tool bar (organizational purposes) and this speeds up the selection process. Currently it is only toggle based (press a button its that tool, press again, go back to old tool) but I do plan on adding an option in the ini to use a holding method instead (hold button, use that tool, release goes back to previous used tool).

Some functions require to be mapped to keys, so far its just the scrolling ,color menu and undo (yes i forgot it in the list above) functions, but the rest can be accessed through the tool bar.

Please keep in mind that this is not an official list of the tools and is subject to change. It is merely an example of what is possible.

So does this seem like a good way to go about this? Does this cover what people want?

So today I decided I would add DS ram expansion support into Etch. Things turned out great, was able to load much larger images (2700 x 2025 ) and for previous image limits (1280×1024) could add layers for that and more undo steps.  There are still a bunch of things I can use the extra ram for but those are just some basic examples. Now for the bad news, while testing this new stuff out because it isn’t quite working perfectly yet, my SD card died. So now that I’m out of an SD card, I can’t test and improve the extra ram stuff, but I can still code the original stuff on an emulator so i guess its not all that bad. Now I must start my new quest of locating $7.64 for my paypal account  for a new SD card off deal extreme.. which could be fairly difficult seeing as I have no way off adding money into it. This may take a while so wish me luck

Edit: A friend lent me the money I needed so my new sd card should be here in a few weeks.

So while my blog has been down, I have been busy porting the Freetype 2 library for use on the DS.

What does this mean? Well it means I can use standard TTF files for fonts in my apps.

So what this means is better font support for Etch which now has a font browser for its text input mode:

And here’s a shot of the typing action (bottom screen menu is fairly bare right now )

Well after some unexpected down time, this blog lives on! Basically the situation is that one of the databases crashed and I didn’t have access to fix the problem for while. But I finally managed to get access and repaired the data base Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused if any.

So previously I discussed what is new in this app compared to UA paint. This time I shall be discussing what I have fixed.

First of all, transparency for tools have been fixed. No longer to they create that ugly 3d box effect or overlap each other. Just one smooth alpha blended color.

Secondly is speed. Some of the tools (square specifically) were pretty slow and flickered.  This time there is no flickering or tearing with the line tool. So everything should be running mostly smooth this time around.

Thirdly is the interface. I’ve created a special tool bar which fades in and out when needed and can be moved around. This dynamic tool bar houses all the controls for zooming, changing draw sizes and tools selected. Very handy I must say.

That’s all for now

I have entered this blog in  the DSi XL Nintendo Competition. Basically which ever site that gets the most votes, gets the owner of the site a free DSi XL. So if you wanna vote for this site, feel free. If not, at least vote for some other site. Just because you don’t like me doesn’t mean you should deny others a chance of winning.

Still don’t see any point to voting? This site is offering special promo cards if you vote for them http://boomansion.net/, cmon it’s free stuff just for voting!

The competition voting and information can be found at http://www.dsi-xl.co.uk/dsi-xl-nintendo-website-contest/

So back in December I announced that I was creating a new paint app for the DS, a successor to UA Paint where all of UA Paints flaws (if not most of them) were to be fixed. So far I have quite a bit of this new app done coding wise and have coded enough to confirm some of the goals I wanted to hit. Please keep in mind the information here may change prior to release of said app.

Here is a list of what this paint app can currently do:

-Support images up to 1280 x 1024

-layers and undos dynamically adjusted and created based on how much memory is used.  The smaller the image size, the more memory available for layers and undos.

-Reading support for 24,16 and 8 bit bitmaps along with my own specific filetype for saving projects. This specific type saves each layer individually rather then compressing everything into one image.

-Write support for 24, 16,8 bit bitmaps and my own specific format.

-256 color editing mode with changeable palettes.

-Scaled view of image on top screen.

-zooming

-Stylus Image scrolling. While holding Right on the d-pad, you can use the stylus to drag the image around

-Most settings loaded through INI file.

Whats currently not in that I’d like to add:

-basic tools (so far only drawing is coded)

-grids

-an interface for tools

-probably more things that I can’t think of

Here are some screenshots:

256 color editing

24 and 16 bit color selector

Filebrowser which loads a scaled preview image

And the main draw screen, not zoomed in (yes that is a large image -1140 x 1133)

If anyone has any suggestions as to what I can add feel free to leave a comment.

So I’ve been busy over the last week or so working on my new paint app and trying to fix Zelda. With some success Zelda now works on my card again meaning I’ll be able to work on it as well as my unnamed paint app.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you guys are enjoying your holiday. I know its been a while since I last posted so I hope to bring everyone back up to speed on the situation.

First of all I have been contacted by a select few for the positions I asked for below. There are very talented people who have agreed to help me and I am very thankful that there are so many people to choose from with skills. While I’m not sure who is going to be doing what, I think I may have a decent idea with how I’m going to handle this.

Second of all, Progress on the actual game itself has slowed down. Due to updating my development environment, some incompatibilities with my flashcard has been created thus limiting my testing. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Due to lack of work on Zelda for the reason above, I have started a secondary project. Because of UA Paints success I have been inspired to make a new pixel art tool. Currently it is unnamed. With this project I hope to fix and improve all the quirks that UA Paint had and  fix what it couldn’t previously do due to the code base such layer and larger image support. This won’t be an exact UA Paint clone, it won’t have all the features it had, but it will be more simplified with just the necessities and then some along with a new streamlined GUI.

I know this probably isn’t what you zelda fans want to hear but it doesn’t mean the project is stopped. In the mean time, until all the art for it and when I can get it’s problem fixed, I’ll be working on my new pixel art app.