Page 4 of 8

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri May 25, 2018 10:18 pm
by Fleexy
Perhaps there was some confusion - you should try to place items in the foreground when possible. The limits on things are hard to define, but try the Level Inspector; it does a decent job of determining the problem. The sprite memory usage (infoplane items and monsters) applies to the entire level if I remember correctly. There are some things that only count when on screen, like the number of animating tiles.

For a door to work, the foreground tile has to have the "door" property. There are invisible tiles that the game uses for this. To see the door property visually, enable the tile properties overlay (press B), click the "tileinfo overlay settings" link in the status bar, check Door, and click OK. The letter "D" will appear on top of door tiles. This will be easier to read if you also enable visual links mode (press L).

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 12:40 am
by Nisaba
my suggestion would be that you do export and upload the level map you are currently working on for debugging reasons. (Level -> Export)
just send me a pm.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 12:04 pm
by darkdave1985
ok, i checked it and you were right fleexy. she said use them always from the foreground, not infoplane. so i remembered that wrong. but when i take them from the foreground, i can only use them on background tiles. otherwise i would delete the relevant foreground tile, when i place a item on it and that would limit this whole thing even more for me. there would be really sparse room to place items then. so hard to say, how i will do it in the future. on the one hand i want to place my items also on the foreground without deleting it but on the other hand i want to save memory. but i would say that best i will take them always from the foreground now when there is just a background tile behind that spot where i wanna place it and when not, i will take them from the infoplane. i saw that they did it the same in the original maps and that's the way which makes the most sense i think.

and now to the doors. with tileinfo overlay settings and "d" active i saw, that this whole black room under the floor you are walking on in the first map, is full with door properties. and in this black area, i made my own rooms. maybe that's the reason why it not worked. i don't know why id software made this whole black room full wih door properties, because there are no doors in there. there is just one door in the 7 life secret area beside this but no one in the whole black area where i made my own rooms. i also activated the line mode to check it but there were also no lines in that whole black area. how can all these black foreground tiles have door properties, when there are no lines in there because nothing is connected? and i saw that in other original maps too, there are always door properties in black areas but without any door graphic or connected lines. i thought that a door property cannot appear and start to work, before i have two linked points. am i right with this? and also important, can i delete the door properties by itself or not? because when i try do delete it, the foreground tile gets also deleted. so, i think not but maybe in antoher way. please tell me all these things and then i will try everything again and then i hope it works.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 8:20 pm
by Fleexy
Correct, you should use foreground items when possible, but if there's already a foreground tile there, use the infoplane.

The original developers made a mistake - it is not reasonable to have an entire cavern of door tiles. It doesn't hurt anything, though, since doors can generally only be used while standing on solid ground. The door properties are from the foreground tile, so you should be able to replace them with the zero tile everywhere that you don't need to be a door. You cannot separate the door property (or any other property) from the foreground tile; it's the foreground tile that provides the property. If a usable door has no link, it will take Keen to the upper left of the level - coordinates 0, 0 - which will cause him to exit.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 7:58 pm
by darkdave1985
i can't start the map anymore because the game says, there are too many unique animating tiles. which tiles are all unique animating tiles exactly? i need to know that, to know which things i have to delete. also the level inspector says the same thing too. i deleted some infoplane things but it was still not enough. and some days ago another thing happened. i was able to start the map but my laserbullets disappeared into nowhere. the number counted down but i couldn't kill enemys anymore. also other things like shooted darts disappeared. but i think to know, what the game did. because my limit back then was nearly reached and memory was pretty scarce, the game cleared memory automatically for me, otherwise i wouldn't have been able to start the map anymore with keen. and so i pressed the a+b+t cheat to get 99 shots and after that i was able again to shoot enemys and after i did so, eveything worked normally again. with killing enemys memory was cleared and so now free for the other things that didn't worked before. am i right with this?

oh, and since some days all doors are working. i made some new rooms and everytime it worked. i'm hoping that i'm not getting into such a problem again because i don't knewed for days what i should do and what was exactly wrong and still don't know it to date. but then suddenly it worked out of nowhere but i did nothing else than the last time and that's weird. but anyway, now i got it.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 10:03 pm
by Fleexy
"Too many unique animating tiles" means that there are too many different kinds of tiles in the level that animate. You need to reduce the number of different kinds of animating tiles in the level; changing the infoplane will not help. The problem of shots/darts disappearing happens when there are too many sprites (infoplane items and monsters). The Level Inspector can warn you about this too. Things may intermittently start working normally again, but you should reduce the amount of sprites in the level to make sure the player has a good experience. (For example, music can stop working when too much memory is used.)

I'm glad you got the doors working. I suspect the problem you were having before was that you were missing the invisible tiles that have the door property.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 1:51 pm
by darkdave1985
ok, just that i understand this right. animating tiles are either moving foreground or moving background tiles but never infoplane things. and in summary i have too much of them, so i need to reduce some of them. ok, but which things are all animating tiles. in the bg for example all the eyes from the trees or the small moving monsters which are in the soil. and in the fg for example all items because they are all moving too and maybe some other things. i hope i'm right with this. and i can never place moving fg tiles on moving bg tiles because this don't work together. have you some other tips of what i should take care of, when it comes to bg and fg and limits and so on?

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 8:29 pm
by 55Aavenue
Your examples of background animating tiles are correct. Some good examples of foreground tiles that are animating would be things like fire, the black tar, the pools of green acid. Stuff like that.

If you put tons of foreground animating things in your level (like lots of tar or fire) try using the palm tree background rather than the other tree background (where the tree's eyes blink) because the palm tree background doesn't have anything that animates. I got that too many unique animating tiles error in one of the first levels I tried making when I had a level with tons of tar and then tried having the trees background with all of their eyes blinking. Just thought this tip might be helpful to you.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed May 30, 2018 9:07 pm
by darkdave1985
the things you said are good examples. i just thought about items in the foreground at first, because they are moving too but there are of course more. it's sad that the limits are so low in everything.

but now there is also a new thing which are not working. when i want to play the map the error line "no purgable blocks" appear. what does that mean? i have an assumption but i'm not sure.

and as i said. when you making hills for example or any gradients, you have to make background tiles underneath. but for what reason? is that maybe the same principle like by other things in the foreground, also like by these ones which are laying directly on the ground and which you have to fill up later with background tiles, because a part of the foreground tile gets deleted? because i saw that there are always background tiles behind hills and such things. and i also don't know how i have to build these bg tiles correctly by such things. i checked some of these examples in original maps but it was different every time. sometimes there were stairs 1x1 high, sometimes there were stairs with 2 arrays high. sometimes there were holes inbetween, sometimes not. so it's hard for say to me, on what it really depends to build them correctly.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Wed May 30, 2018 9:22 pm
by Fleexy
Any tile that changes automatically is an animating tile. You don't have too many animating tiles yet, but rather too many kinds of them. The Level Inspector has an info line called "animated tile type total" that tells you how many different kinds of animating tiles you have.

I'm not familiar with that specific error message - could you please post the exact full text displayed, including the code (function name) at the beginning? This probably has to do with there being too much of something in the level. Make sure the Level Inspector inspection is passing.

The background tiles behind opaque foreground tiles don't matter. It's impossible to have no background tile, but it doesn't matter which you have if you can't see it. Any patterns are probably leftovers from copy-pasting. (In levels I make, I'm sure the background behind solid platforms is a weird discontinuous mishmash.)

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 11:57 am
by darkdave1985
the exact error line is:

MM_ClearBlock: No purgable blocks!
i checked some days ago if that same problem appears in the level inspector but it don't.

ok, every moving or rather automatically changing tile is an animating tile. no matter if bg,fg or ip.

ok, i don't need any background tiles behind hills or such things. but i just wondered myself about that first, because in nearly every original map there are always exactly under hills or gradients such bg tiles. and so i thought, they all can't be there by accident. because in some cases you need some specific bg tiles behind fg tiles. as for example by rocks or exit signs, also by things which are laying directly on the ground because you have to fill up the transparent part of the fg tile later with the same looking and matching bg tile. and i thought at first, that it's the same thing by hills or gradients but good to know, that it's not.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 4:15 pm
by darkdave1985
and also once again to the other "too many unique animating tiles" thing. first, i have not that much different types of animating tiles in it. so the limit must be really low. it also would mean, that i have to delete at least one type of animating tiles completely. because there are too many types of it, not too much animating tiles overall. like as fleexy said last time. and one last thing. does every different point item which is tooked from the fg, count as it's own type of animating tiles or do all point item types together, count as one?

i really would need help with this and also with the last questions in the last message. because i can't play my map anymore for all these reasons.

thank you very much!

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 6:07 pm
by Fleexy
Both background and foreground can contribute to the animating tile count, but the infoplane doesn't, since it generates sprites and not tiles. Each kind of foreground point item is a different kind of animating tile, but the original levels have plenty of points and don't have any problems, so you probably don't need to worry about point items.

I think that error message has to do with tile properties, but I wasn't able to reproduce it using the original game's tileinfo. Have you modified the tileinfo (using the Tile Property Modifier) at all? That could also explain there being more animating tiles than expected.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 7:27 pm
by darkdave1985
no, i never used this tool. because i don't even know what i could do with it. but maybe it's this reason here. i still work on border village and in the original version, there are 2 rows of this brown 0000h bg tile underneath the 2 rows with the edge of map tiles and that through the whole map. i always wondered for what they should be, because you don't see this part in the game because of this blue blocking sprite from the ip which is in it. and normally i should be able to change that part how i want without getting a problem, because these 2 brown rows are just normal bg tiles and nothing else. and so i did, some days ago. i changed the bg and also made him 2 rows higher, which were these 2 original brown ones before. and i also deleted the blue blocking sprite thing, because you should see that part from now on in the game. then i saved everything and i believe, that after this workstep the current problem started. maybe that's the reason but maybe that's just bullshit. i don't know.

Re: i want to begin to learn mapping for the galaxy engine and i need someone to support me!

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 9:01 pm
by Fleexy
No need to worry about tileinfo yet, then. Making more of the level visible shouldn't be a problem either.

I suspect the problem may be too many unique tiles after all. (Perhaps the Level Inspector's thresholds need some tweaking on my part.) To investigate the tiles you're using without exposing your level before it's ready, we'll need to do some tricks. Download PSThar and place the AEX file in the same folder as Abiathar. (PSThar is an Abiathar extension that allows us to run code inside Abiathar.) Before starting Abiathar, right-click PSThar.aex and choose Properties. Unblock it using the button or checkbox near the bottom of the window. Click OK. Start Abiathar. If everything worked properly, you should see an Extensions item added to the main menu. (You don't need to do anything with it; just make sure it's there.) Then open the level you're working on. From the Tools menu, select PSThar. If you see two entries called PSThar, select the topmost one. You'll get a dialog with two boxes. Paste this script in the top box:

Code: Select all

$back = @()
$fore = @()
$CurLevel | %t {
	$b = $CurLevel | Get-LevelTile $x $y 0
	$f = $CurLevel | Get-LevelTile $x $y 1
	If (!$back.Contains($b)) { $script:back += $b }
	If (!$fore.Contains($f)) { $script:fore += $f }
}
[string]$back + "`r`n" + [string]$fore
Click Run Script. Once the script finishes, a ton of numbers will appear in the bottom box. These are lists of all the unique tile IDs used in the level. Select it all, copy it, and paste it into a post or onto PasteBin. You can then close the PSThar window.