The Mana World Workshop

[Jaxad0127]

This is the continuation of The Mana World Data Viewer. I've added a recolor workshop, the minimap creation utilities, and some more controls on the sprite viewers (delay controls and the ability to step through the animations, at the request of EJlol). Downloads and manual.

[Crush]

Please note that the minimaps created by the minimap creation tool don't have the style of the other minimaps and thus will not be accepted for inclusion in the official TMW. When you want to create a minimap for an official map please use the manual method described in the mapping tutorial.

[Jaxad0127]

Please note that the minimaps created by the minimap creation tool don't have the style of the other minimaps and thus will not be accepted for inclusion in the official TMW. When you want to create a minimap for an official map please use the manual method described in the mapping tutorial.

That can be fixed by changing the opacity maps, I just wanted to show some that were more detailed than we have now. The only problem is that they come out too large and have to be resized per step 9 of that tutorial.

One thing I forgot to mention is that EJlol also requested transparency for the player sprites, which can be accessed by right clicking the dropdown boxes for the sprites.

The manual is up.

[Crush]

The tool will still not draw cliffs and buildings as they are supposed to appear according to the tutorial. But now for something different:

I tried out the tool itself and I have some problems with it.

When I start it it appears as a wide and low window which shows only the 4 buttons "Monster Viewer", "Item Viewer", "Player Viewer", "Color Chooser" and an icon whichs purpose is not obviouse from its appearance. When I clicked on the first 4 buttons nothing happened. It took a while until I realized that I could drag the window larger to reveal the work area. I found out that the 5th button allowed me to set the path to my tmw data folder through experimentation. But this didn't seem to work properly because after setting it to a path to a checked out tmwdata repository the buttons "Item Viewer" and "Monster Viewer" do nothing and the "Player Viewer" window doesn't seem to load a player sprite.

I am using Windows XP and Java Version 1.6.0_05

[Jaxad0127]

When I start it it appears as a wide and low window which only shows the 4 buttons "Monster Viewer", "Item Viewer", "Player Viewer", "Color Chooser" and an icon whichs purpose is not obviouse from its appearance. When I clicked on the first 4 buttons nothing happened. It took a while until I realized that I could drag the window larger to reveal the work area.

There are some sizing issues I'm still working out with the various windows, etc.

I found out that the 5th button allowed me to set the path to my tmw data folder through experimentation. But this didn't seem to work properly because after setting it to a path to a checked out tmwdata repository the buttons "Item Viewer" and "Monster Viewer" do nothing and the "Player Viewer" window doesn't seem to load a player sprite.

You need to restart after changing the location of the .tmw directory. If that directory isn't found at startup, you will be prompted to find it. It doesn't need to be named .tmw. The program loads the data files like the client does, with some small changes.

[Crush]

Oh, I have to point it to a folder which contains a folder named "data", not the data folder itself? Good to know...

[Jaxad0127]

Oh, I have to point it to a folder which contains a folder named "data", not the data folder itself? Good to know...

For the moment. If you point it to your .tmw folder, it will parse updates/resource2.txt and load those files, and customdata/customdata.zip. The data directory is for uncompressed stuff, to make it easier to work with and it's where the workshop saves stuff. The next version will fix the size problems, allow you to change the (writable) data directory, point it at the client's application directory, and will explain all of this better in the settings dialog.

[Crush]

Ah, now it works.

Regarding the dyeing: The graphics are a tad to bright. Just a guess: Did you maybe forgot to add pure black as the first color to the beginning of the color ramps like the tmw engine does?

[Jaxad0127]

Ah, now it works.

Regarding the dyeing: The graphics are a tad to bright. Just a guess: Did you maybe forgot to add pure black as the first color to the beginning of the color ramps like the tmw engine does?

I mentioned that in the first post. The original Data Viewer used the same exact code as the client (with the int[]'s replaced by Color objects). The Workshop uses the same basic code, with extensibility enhancements. The method that maps intensities into color values (in the palette object) is the same as that in the client, with two minor speed improvements (it uses an array instead of a vector and calculates the length of said array times the intensity once instead of twice). The code for finding intensity values is the same as well, the only difference is how they're put together and how stuff is stored. If you can read Java, the Dye class is tmw/resource/Dye.java (with Palette as a sub class). I can't find anything wrong with it.

[Jaxad0127]

I've uploaded a new version. It fixes the default sizing issues with the main windows and the opacity map editor. The writable data directory can now be controlled separately from the client's data directory, and the clients application directory can also be specified. These can be set in the settings dialog, where they are explained. Size, position, and state of the main window, task window, viewers, and color chooser are now saved with the workshop's settings. The workshop stores it's settings and log file in the .tmww directory, which is usually in the same folder as the .tmw directory. The previous version used this as well, and used a paths file in that directory, which is no longer needed and can be removed.

[Jaxad0127]

I've uploaded a small bug fix to the previous version. Minimaps are now written to the writable directory instead of the user directory (unless they're the same, of course). I've uploaded some more minimap samples that I hope are more to your liking.

[Jaxad0127]

Could someone on a Mac (or similar system with correct gamma) please compare images dyed by the workshop (like the scorpions) to how they look in the client? This affects all scorpions, all slimes, regular and mountain snakes, all plate mail (including warlord's), etc. Hair wont work. I think I found the 'problem' with the dyes, but need confirmation from someone with the correct system setup.

[Jaxad0127]

A new version of the workshop is up. The image loading code has been fixed so images should no longer be lighter than they really are. I'd still like someone with a Mac (or similar) to test an older version as described in my previous post (download previous version here). I've also fixed some more UI bugs and added the checkered grid thats always behind transparencies to the opacity map editor and the monster and player viewers. The monster viewer loads differently now, the monster DB is loaded in the background so the UI stays responsive. You can also reload the monster database while the program is running (context menu on the monster list). I'm looking into doing a similar thing for the player and item viewers. Also, the workshop is under the GPL.

[Crush]

How about adding some way to edit dyeing palettes of monsters, items and player sprites and see the effect in real time? This would really make the process of creating recolorations much more comfortable.

[Jaxad0127]

How about adding some way to edit dyeing palettes of monsters, items and player sprites and see the effect in real time? This would really make the process of creating recolorations much more comfortable.

That's what the recolor workshop is for. I'll add a dialog that makes it easier to load images from the client data, as well as a button to save the recolored image.