New version of Tilificator

A place for your artistic side. Discuss techniques and tools for pixel art on the NES, GBC, or similar platforms.

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Bananmos
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Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:08 am
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New version of Tilificator

Post by Bananmos »

I had to dust off my sprite tile conversion/optimization tool Tilificator for a hobby project. And I took some time to do a couple of modernizing changes to it.

* Version control system changed from SVN to Git
* Source code updated from Python2 to Python3
* GUI toolkit changed from PyGtk to Qt-for-Python (aka PySide2)
* Sprite images now use a list widget, to allow easy deletion / re-ordering
* There's now an optional "Global Optimization" feature.

(the name "Global Optimization) is a bit of a lie to be honest, as it's just a prediction of future tile matches added onto a greedy algorithm. It can still fail / produce even worse results. Alas, it wasn't the silver bullet I hoped for and I think a new approach using linear programming would be the next thing I'd try if I had more time / motivation. However, using the new feature with the current defaults generally appears to improve most test cases, if you can stomach the increase in conversion time.)

You can get a Win64 build of Tilificator v0.3 from its sourceforge page. If you'd rather have the source-code, look here instead. The short tutorial has also been recovered using the Wayback machine, and can now be found here.

In the 6+ years since Tilificator last saw an update, I think Streemerz has been the only NES project to ever use it for anything. It appears that sprite tile conversion is an area where people really enjoy writing their own tools / doing it by hand, and the demand for tools is actually very low. :P

Still, if someone here finds sprite tile conversion a chore and is struggling to fit their tiles, then I think this tool could be useful to you.
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