Also took the liberty of updating my To-Do list with a number of feature ideas that have surfaced in the last couple of days; one of these is being able to constrict the main drawing tools using SHIFT (in the case of lines, it restricts them to horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, while rectangles are restricted to squares). These are fairly standard fare in programs such as PhotoShop, and you really miss them when you don't have them - hence their inclusion :)
Another couple of ideas surfaced for Brush Mode (changing the grid size to that of the brush, and allowing the Brush to snap to the grid), animating the collision data for each tile as well as the tile data itself (allowing, for instance, intermittent force fields), and a Test Map module which allows the user to preview how their map will look in the context of a real game (complete with adjustable scroll speeds and parallax scrolling).
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Work was cancelled tonight (such is the nature of being an Agency donkey), which gave me a chance to launch into a serious session with Blitz. I've been unhappy with certain aspects of the editor's functionality for a while, so before implementing multiple maps, I really want to get the basic GUI and window structure sorted out (as I mentioned back on August 11). This is something I'd been dreading for a while, as the documentation for Blitz's GUI and Windows functions is a little sparse in places, and most of the forums only seem to lightly scratch the surface.
Additionally, the code is often complex in terms of setting up, initialising, and de-activating the various input gadgets, so cutting 'n' pasting routines and trying to shoe-horn them into the Editor is pointless because the code is heavily fragmented - more often than not, it's better to write from scratch. Most example code is not usually indented either, making it hard or tedious to read in places.
The only graceful way to get things done, therefore, is to load up a sample program (providing I can find one that demonstrates the effect I'm after) and constantly flick back and forth between the sample, the Editor, and the GUI reference guide, and write my own version of the code. It's not pleasant and can be tough on the grey matter, but after a couple of hours I'd learned a number of new tricks, and managed to get the tilestrip displayed in its own little window. Aww, bless.
