User Manual 1.01

www.GBAtools.com

Introduction | Tile Grabber | Map Editor | File Formats


 

Introduction

Welcome
System Requirements
Installation Procedure
Production Pipeline
Recommended Usage

 

Welcome

Welcome to Level Mapper, comprising two powerful tools to create and edit tile-based level maps, namely Tile Grabber and Map Editor.

System Requirements

OS: Windows 95 / 98 / ME / XP.
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III 500mhz or better recommended.
Hard Disk: 10MB or more free space.
Main Memory: 64MB or more.
Direct X: 8.0 or greater.

Installation Procedure

This package is distributed as a zip file. It should be unzipped, with the folder structure intact, to a location of your choice, on your local hard disk.

This software does not modify the system registry, so it can be safely uninstalled by deleting all the installed files from your local hard disk.

Production Pipeline

Creating tile-based level maps with Level Mapper is a 3 stage process, thus:

     

Stage 1.
Production of a 'tile-set bitmap' (.BMP) file.

Stage 2.
Conversion of this 'tile-set bitmap', by Tile Grabber, in to a tile-set (.TS) file. Tile Grabber can also be configured to output additional files:

  • Diagnostic bitmap (.TGA) file.
  • Raw tile data (.TIL) file.
  • Raw palette data in 'GBA ready' B:5 G:5 R:5 format (.PAL) file.
  • Raw bank (.BANK) file. (i.e. Palette number 0-15 for each 16 colour tile).
  • Raw meta map (.MMAP) file.
  • Raw word map in 'GBA ready' 16-bit background format (.WMAP) file.
  • Raw byte map for 8-bit backgrounds (.BMAP) file.

Stage 3.
Map Editor takes a tile-set (.TS) file as input, and allows you to construct maps with this tile-set. When you have created and edited your maps, you can save them as map (.MAP) files. You can also:

  • Open and save individual layers in our layer (.LAY) file format.
  • Export maps as 16-bit hi-colour bitmap (.TGA) files.
  • Export individual layers as 8-bit bitmap (.BMP) files.
  • Import individual layers from 8-bit bitmap (.BMP) files.

Recommended Usage

We recommend using the following procedure (for each game project in development).

If you have a 'resource' or 'assets' folder (or whatever you call it) where you store your data assets for a given project, create a new sub-folder inside it, called something like 'levels'.

Copy the 4 supplied files from the 'programs' sub-folder to this new 'levels' folder (or you can setup shortcuts to the executables if you prefer).

Inside this new 'levels' folder, create a new sub-folder for each tile-set that your game will use. You can always add more later.

In the following sample folder structure, we have 4 tile-sets for the 'Racing Game', these are 'Desert', 'Race Track', 'Snow' and 'Woodland'.

Inside each of the 'tile-set' sub-folders, you will need to put a tile-set bitmap (created by your artist).

Next, edit the text file 'grab_tiles.txt', which you have just copied to your new 'levels' folder. For more information on how to do this, click here, or take a look at the provided samples.

When you have modified 'grab_tiles.txt', double-click on 'grab_tiles.exe'. This will run Tile Grabber and convert all the tile-sets that you specified in 'grab_tiles.txt'.

Now you are ready to run Map Editor. Double-click on 'map_editor.exe'.

We recommend keeping all your data (tile-sets, maps, attributes) relating to each tile-set, together in the same sub-folder (i.e. one folder per tile-set).