Commander X16

This is very cool Dacobi! Just in time as I'll be playing with this the next couple of days.

I just found this tool. Very impressive work Dacobi.

I have been playing with it for last hour or so but couldn't find one fundamental feature. Does it allow to use 1bpp modes? I couldn't find where to select foreground/background color for 16 color mode or foreground color for 256 color mode.

I have been playing with it for last hour or so but couldn't find one fundamental feature. Does it allow to use 1bpp modes? I couldn't find where to select foreground/background color for 16 color mode or foreground color for 256 color mode.

I'm afraid it doesn't. I started making TilemapEd to fit my own needs and I've never needed BPP 1.
As I recall BPP 1 is a special case so I think I decided I wouldn't include it to begin with. I still don't know how these modes work, so don't know how hard it would be to add support for it.
But as it is now the focus is very much on BPP 8 and 4.

Edit: I think the problem with/reason I didn't add support for BPP 1 is that the way TilemapEd works on a fundamental level, using the Palette to choose a Color and then placing that Color in a Tile wouldn't work with BPP 1. I'm afraid it would take a large amount of work to add support for these modes, but again I still haven't really looked into how they work.

Edit2: I've just been reading up on the documentation for VERA and BPP 1 Tilemaps and I'm afraid it would be a huge undertaking to add support for these to TilemapEd. Even the Tilemap formats are completely different so it would basically be writing a new version of TilemapEd and adding it on top of the existing one. I don't think this will happen any time soon.

Edit3: I've been reading some more in the VERA documentation and there's one thing I still don't understand about BPP 1 Tilemaps. Each Tilemap value has a Character Index along with the Color/Colors, but the Character that the Index points to, will that just be represented on the screen as a line of 8 pixels? Or is it the actual Character that's being rendered as pixels with the chosen Color/Colors?

I just uploaded version 1.8.134, where the Selection Editor now has an Overlay for "Tile Values".

Also the CollisionMap Editor has an Overlay for "Tile Index".

There's also some bugfixes for show "Selected Color", when the BPP is under 8 and for the actual rendering of the selection grid.
Plus a bugfix for DefaultTextColor, when using "Light Theme".

Dacobi wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2023 6:33 am Edit3: I've been reading some more in the VERA documentation and there's one thing I still don't understand about BPP 1 Tilemaps. Each Tilemap value has a Character Index along with the Color/Colors, but the Character that the Index points to, will that just be represented on the screen as a line of 8 pixels? Or is it the actual Character that's being rendered as pixels with the chosen Color/Colors?

The first byte of the tilemap entry works the same for all tilemaps. It contains the index of the tile and the tile will be rendered as a whole. 1 bpp tile mode is also called text mode because it is primarily relevant for rendering text. When tiles/characters are 8 pixels wide and high, a character (tile) will consist of 8 bytes where each byte contains 8 pixels. Am I answering your question?

I don’t think it’s worth the effort to add support for the 1 bpp tile modes. I think it will be very rarely used for anything else than text. Or am I missing some use case here?

The first byte of the tilemap entry works the same for all tilemaps. It contains the index of the tile and the tile will be rendered as a whole. 1 bpp tile mode is also called text mode because it is primarily relevant for rendering text. When tiles/characters are 8 pixels wide and high, a character (tile) will consist of 8 bytes where each byte contains 8 pixels. Am I answering your question?

So when the docs call the BPP 1 Tilemap value for "Character Index" then that's still an index to normal Tile data, only with BPP 1?

I don’t think it’s worth the effort to add support for the 1 bpp tile modes. I think it will be very rarely used for anything else than text. Or am I missing some use case here?

I've never looked into it before and don't know what the use cases are, but in any case I won't be focusing on it any time soon. But if the actual Tile data is the same as e.g. BPP 2 only with one bit less, it wouldn't be as big of a problem to add support than what I thought at first.

I just modified the latest release to version 1.8.136 with a slight update to CollisionMap Editors Overlay.
It now shows both "Tile Index" and "Collision Value" and is enabled when the TileMap Overlays are visible or when "Show Overlay" is checked.

Dacobi wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2023 11:48 am So when the docs call the BPP 1 Tilemap value for "Character Index" then that's still an index to normal Tile data, only with BPP 1?

Yes, that is right. 1 bpp tile mode is typically used for displaying text, which is why the tiles are called characters here. Characters are in other words the same thing as 1 bpp tiles.

Yes, that is right. 1 bpp tile mode is typically used for displaying text, which is why the tiles are called characters here. Characters are in other words the same thing as 1 bpp tiles

Ok, that makes a lot more sense than what I thought at first, which I'm not really sure what was.

It would still take a huge amount of work to add support for these modes. Right now everything works the same no matter what the BPP is with only a few functions, mostly for import, not being present for BPP 2.

For these other modes the way the Palette works as well as basic editing wouldn't make much sense.
I'd probably have to create seperate modes for both Tilemap Editor and Tile Editor and then a new mode for the Palette as well.

Just leave it for now : ). You can always reconsider in the future when you see how people are using the tool.