v0.5.2 released!
Small changes, but really enhancing usability IMHO:
- Better integration with Tiled, or any external map editor. More on this below.
- Map creation in ATCS, either from the template or by copying one that exists in your project (game data, altered or created)
- More robust startup scripts on both Windows and Linux
- Persistent customization of app startup (memory, java binary, JVM options). More on this below.
- Sometimes requests admin rights on Windows only. More on this below.
- Bugfixes to avoid ConcurrentModificationExceptions, by using thread-safe collections.
Tiled integration
You must have installed Tiled for this to work. It's not bundled with ATCS, and never will be.
To use it, open a created or altered map. From here, click on the huge Tiled icon at the top-left. This will open the map in Tiled. It will first prompt you to save in ATCS if it's needed before opening in Tiled. Do your job in Tiled, save, close Tiled, then hit the now active "Reload" button in ATCS to refresh the map data in ATCS.
If by mistake you made some changes in ATCS after saving in Tiled, but before reloading, both the reload and the save buttons will warn you of the consequences. Your safest bet is then to use "save" in ATCS, as it will create a backup of the Tiled version in your workspace, and give you the location of the backup.
This is all good and fun, but for you, and just you
, the Tiled button doesn't work at all... Worry not, I thought about you. By default, ATCS uses the default operating system action to open TMX files, but using the File->Workspace settings menu, you can change that behavior. You can specify a custom command for TMX Map opening instead of using the system default.
The usual values would be "tiled" or "tiled.exe" (without quotes), but you can also use a full path if your system cannot find it, or if you have a portable install, or several versions and want to use a specific one.
If you're crazy enough, you can actually specify any command, not just tiled. Using "notepad.exe" on windows, you'll have a totally unusable way of editing maps. These settings are local to your ATCS workspace, so if you have several, you'll have to do it again.
Side note, in this settings panel, you'll also notice the same type of configuration for images. Spritesheets are read-only in ATCS, but this allows you to have a nice shortcut to your favorite image viewer to zoom on them. Just use the large button at the top-left of the spritesheet editor. Unless you say you like it a lot, I may very well remove this, as I have doubts about its usefulness.
Startup customization
From now on, upon startup, ATCS will create a file whose name starts with ATCS.env (ending is platform-dependent) in the ATCS install folder. You can modify this file to change the maximum memory usable by ATCS (set it higher if you run into OutOfMemory errors because you have tons of projects open). Using powers of two is recommended, and end with "M" to indicate that you mean MegaBytes.
You can also change the java binary used. Typically, use "javaw" or "javaw.exe" for a seamless experience, "java" or "java.exe" to also view the debug console, which prints out messages that are useful for me to correct any bugs you may encounter. You can also use a full path to specify another JVM than your system-default.
Finally, you can specify custom JVM parameters, but I'll leave that to experts who already know what I'm talking about.
If you use the windows installer, ATCS lives in C:\Program Files(x86)\ by default, and this folder requires administrative rights. In this case, the custom startup file cannot be created by ATCS' launch script. You'll have to run ATCS as Administrator once to create the file, and edit it using a text editor launched as Administrator too.
Administrative rights on Windows
For Tiled integration, ATCS uses "symbolic links" or "directory junctions" to trick Tiled into thinking that the tilesets are at in the ATCS workspace, while they actually are in the game source folder. This is prety standard on Linux and other unixes, but on Windows, this requires admin rights.
For each project, ATCS will ask show four "Do you allow..." popups, to create two links. This is needed only once per project, so you'll be nagged at the first run of the new ATCS, and at each creation of a new project.
You can avoid this by running ATCS as administrator once. You'll still be nagged four times at each new project, but that's it.
Lvl: 78, XP: 8622632, Gold: 271542, RoLS: 1, ElyR: -, RoL: -, ChaR: 1, GoLF: 1, ShaF: 1, SRoV: 1, VSH: 1, WMC: 1, GoW: 1
HP: 71, AC: 301%, AD: 38-47, AP: 3, ECC: 50%, CM: 3.75, BC: 101%, DR: 2
