How do I edit tilesets?

[nppangband]

One thing I have never done a good job with in NPP is keeping the tilesets up to date, and with all the changes in monsters and terrain I don't have a single functioning tileset for NPP.

I could probably find all the tiles I need already drawn in UNAngband, if I knew how to cut and paste them, and figure out what the coordinates should be. What is the best way to do this?

Also, I see lots of freeware programs out there for editing tilesets Does anyone have one that they recommend?

Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

[Derakon]

I don't know how Angband actually maps objects to tiles, but if you have a collection of BMP or PNG or whatever images and you want to composite them into a single tilemap in a fixed arrangement, ImageMagick will do it for you. It's basically image manipulation from the commandline, so it's very programmer-friendly.

[Nomad]

The coordinates are specified in the pref files. In Vanilla there are three files for each tile set:

graf-xxx.prf - terrain, objects and monsters
flvr-xxx.prf - flavoured objects
xtra-xxx.prf - class/race-specific player tiles

You just assign each feature coordinates in y:x format. The top left tile on the map is 0x80:0x80, the one to the right of it is 0x80:0x81, first one on the row below is 0x81:0x80, etc.

You can easily cut and paste new tiles onto the existing bmp/png files using any old graphics program. Or you could just replace the existing tile maps with the ones from UnAngband, assuming they're the same dimensions, and then it's just a case of editing the prefs to make sure all the features are assigned appropriate tiles.

[buzzkill]

I use Paint.NET for all my graphic editing. It does way more than you need but it's free and easy to get the hang of. It displays pixel by pixel coordinates so it's easy to tell exactly where you're placing something (which is very important). That said, I've nothing to really compare it to as it's all I've ever used, though I have heard good things about GIMP also.

Nomad covered everything else. I believe hex format is optional. So referring to the top left as 128:128 should work just as well.

Derakon mentioned a program that will paste individual tiles together into a tileset. Here's another. It's called Glue Sprites. It works both ways. It can dissemble a tile set into individual tiles, or take individual tiles and reassemble them. It does what it says but I've never found it to be very useful.

[nppangband]

@Buzzzkill - I didn't realize you had done a tileset for NPP. It looks to be based on DVG? What changes did you make, and may I have your permission to include it in NPPAngband? Thanks.

[buzzkill]

@Buzzzkill - I didn't realize you had done a tileset for NPP. It looks to be based on DVG? What changes did you make, and may I have your permission to include it in NPPAngband? Thanks.

Wow, that's weird. I didn't realize it either. I don't even recall ever playing NPP. Anyhoo, I guessing that I did a minimal amount of work, maybe assigned some terrains and early monsters, I'd guess.

You're welcome to it, in whatever state it happens to be in. Let me know if at some point you surpass what I've done so that I can remove my inferior version.

[buzzkill]

@Buzzzkill - I didn't realize you had done a tileset for NPP. It looks to be based on DVG? What changes did you make, and may I have your permission to include it in NPPAngband? Thanks.

I finally got around to playing NPP. It's turns out I did nothing more than import the Vanilla tileset and (possibly) made some changes to the graf-dvg.prf. In any case, it seems to work well, at least to DL 7. The only things I encountered that weren't assigned a graphic were "the walls carved by elvish hands" and the dreaded "pink mushroom" that killed me (both represented by ASCII). Everything else was spot on.

Anyone who must have tiles should give it a try, and of course it should be included with the next release, maybe with a disclaimer as to it's completeness.

Get graf-dvg.prf here. Then copy and paste 32x32.bmp and mask32.bmp from your Vanilla folder.