NES Screen Tool

[calima]

So, someone emailed Shiru, right?

It could be you!

Totally, except I don't use NESST Folks, Shiru doesn't come here any longer, someone using this mail him.

[freem]

It would appear the program's been updated recently... latest version is now v2.3, with custom nametable size support. I haven't gotten around to testing if the attribute bug has been fixed, however.

[Punch]

My version here is 2.04, and according to the NTFS data it was last modified Jan. 29, 2015. It doesn't have the RLE attribute bug as far as I can tell.

I'll stay on this version for now

[rainwarrior]

Apparently Shiru uploaded a version 2.3 about 4 days ago.

In the readme changelog there's a 2.1 released a year ago, and 2.2 / 2.21 released a month ago.

For some strange reason I've never seen these versions... I downloaded the ZIP many times, including just 2 weeks ago and that zip still says version 2.04... except it's actually a version from early 2015, and not the version of 2.04 I was used to? I think shiru had maybe been updating it sometimes but forgetting to update the ZIP file on his website, and in some cases forgetting to update the version number or readme file??? This is really bizarre.

Anyhow, new version is out, I guess!!!

[Broke Studio]

I don't know if Shiru still catch up here, but thank you for the update !!

[Diskover]

Apparently Shiru uploaded a version 2.3 about 4 days ago.

In the readme changelog there's a 2.1 released a year ago, and 2.2 / 2.21 released a month ago.

For some strange reason I've never seen these versions... I downloaded the ZIP many times, including just 2 weeks ago and that zip still says version 2.04... except it's actually a version from early 2015, and not the version of 2.04 I was used to? I think shiru had maybe been updating it sometimes but forgetting to update the ZIP file on his website, and in some cases forgetting to update the version number or readme file??? This is really bizarre.

Anyhow, new version is out, I guess!!!

That was to comment: before I downloaded the zip again and I found a version 2.3 with new features and with the bug fixed, when before had always put the 2.04

Have you updated it and said nothing? Can be.

[dougeff]

Somehow I missed rainwarrior's post...

But I saw on Shiru's facebook (Alex Semenov (Shiru)) page that he updated the Screen Tool. 2.3...with

"Basic map editor for large scrollable maps" and "new lossy import feature".

I really never go on Facebook anymore... and only happened upon this post by chance.

I'll have to check it out.

[dougeff]

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to set the Map Size. The readme says it can be...
"from 4x4 to 4096x4096" but doesn't say how. The only references in the source code to

"nameTableWidth =" and "nameTableHeight=" are during Opening a map file, and setting a default of 32x30.

??

Edit...you have to click..."Nametable/New Nametable or map" to get the larger (or smaller) map.

[hawken]

Somehow I missed rainwarrior's post...

But I saw on Shiru's facebook (Alex Semenov (Shiru)) page that he updated the Screen Tool. 2.3...with

"Basic map editor for large scrollable maps" and "new lossy import feature".

I really never go on Facebook anymore... and only happened upon this post by chance.

I'll have to check it out.

Can we do scrolling levels in screentool now? I've been looking for something like this.

[Punch]

Nice, did he update his RLE asm code to handle scrolling maps or is it the user's responsibility to account for it?

[surt]

Can we do scrolling levels in screentool now? I've been looking for something like this.

Oh, cool. Yes it does. Scrolling seems to be only with cursor keys. Still only shows a single screen, not an expanded view.

Bug? In Wine so that might cause an issue, but when drawing a stroke of tiles past the edge of the view has some problems when the view edge isn't at the nametable edge.
Top and bottom edges get an alert box saying "Scan line index out of range.".
Left and right edges wrap around the view so the stroke continues from the opposite edge but that part doesn't get saved to the nametable so it disappears when the nametable is scrolled.

[hawken]

Can we do scrolling levels in screentool now? I've been looking for something like this.

Oh, cool. Yes it does.

Enjoying this so far! I can finally make levels in NESst

Have requested a resize function on his facebook.

[dougeff]

Nice, did he update his RLE asm code to handle scrolling maps or is it the user's responsibility to account for it?

If you choose a user defined Nametable size, you can only save as .map. which is uncompressed.

NOTE TO ALL: Shiru fixed the RLE encoder bug (for regular sized nametables).

See code differences in source code...

Old:

Code: Select all

for(i=0;i<size;i++)
		{
			if(src[i]!=sym||len==255||i==size-1)
			{
				if(src[i]==sym&&i==size-1) len++;
				if(len) dst[pp++]=sym;
				if(len>1)
				{
					if(len==2)
					{
						dst[pp++]=sym;
					}
					else
					{
						dst[pp++]=tag;
						dst[pp++]=len-1;
					}
				}
				sym=src[i];
				len=1;
			}
			else
			{
				len++;
			}
		}

New:

Code: Select all

for(i=0;i<size;++i)
	{
		sym=src[i];

		if(sym_prev!=sym||len>=255||i==size-1)
		{
			if(len>1)
			{
				if(len==2)
				{
					dst[ptr++]=sym_prev;
				}
				else
				{
					dst[ptr++]=tag;
					dst[ptr++]=len-1;
				}
			}

			dst[ptr++]=sym;

			sym_prev=sym;

			len=1;
		}
		else
		{
			++len;
		}
	}

[FARID]

The current palette set doesn't show the real colors.
Is there anyway to change the display colors?

[dougeff]

The current palette set doesn't show the real colors.
Is there anyway to change the display colors?

You can edit the palette, by loading the exe in a hex editor and searching for the palette array.