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[Sir Knight]

So I've put together some decent-ish roguelike maps using ASCII, like so:

Spoiler: Better not look at this with Darkling theme (click to show/hide)

████████████████████████
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████████████▒    ▒▒▒▒███
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████▒  ▒▒▒▒▒        ▒▒██
████▒         ▒▒     ▓██
████▒        ▒▒▒     ▓██
████▒        ▒▒▒  ▒▒▒▒██
████▒   ☺☺    ▒   ▒█████
███▒▒   ☺☺       ▒▒█████
██▒▒            ▒▒██████
██▒            ▒▒███████
██▒        ▒▒▒▒▒████████
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But as the spoiler says, it only looks decent-ish in the forum default theme.  And even then it's full of line breaks.  No, a "code" wrapper won't work: there's color.

So, 1:  I guess I can't do ASCII art on these forums.  Not if I want color and everything.  Right?

And, 2:  If I have to make actual image files, does anyone know a program I can use to make them more easily?  (Preferably for free . . . )

[Mesa]

Got you covered. Used it myself for my ISGs, loved it, even got a shoutout from the dev in a thread about it on here.

[Sir Knight]

That is . . . stunningly well-featured.  It even handles .csv files.

Or it says it exports them at least.  It says it imports .txt: so can I just copy and paste my existing ASCII into a .txt and go from there?

Likewise, it exports BBCode: so can I literally feed it my above spoiler with BBCode and all?

[Mesa]

I want to say 'yes', but I am honestly not 100% sure, I always just exported to PNG (never really importing anything) and that worked fine. Maybe because those extra import/export options weren't a thing at the time I used it (that was years ago), or I just can't remember.

Either way I can't really test it now because I'm on Linux, even if it allegedly runs fine through Wine.
_{Laziness Executive dysfunction is a slow and insidious killer.}

[Sir Knight]

Either way, thank you!  I'll dive into this and see what works.

Of course, then I have to figure out where to host the .png results.  Hmm.  People have a lot of opinions on that . . .

[Sir Knight]

That turned out well.  Thank you!  If you want to see the results, I've started a game over here.

Spoiler: Above ASCII image as a finished graphic (click to show/hide)

[Kyzrati]

Ooh, nice. I especially like this one,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

which is now in the gallery

[Sir Knight]

Well!  I hadn't thought of any of these images going into a gallery.  That's interesting.

I've also been working on some other complicated graphics like that one; just haven't had occasion to post them yet.

A thought occurs to me: the "workshop" 3x3 patterns were all taken from Dwarf Fortress, which of course I'm using because I'm on the Dwarf Fortress website.  That shouldn't be a problem in using the image on another site, right?

[Kyzrati]

Well!  I hadn't thought of any of these images going into a gallery.  That's interesting.

Looks like a cool map to me, and those faded edges really made it look better--haven't seen that effect before

A thought occurs to me: the "workshop" 3x3 patterns were all taken from Dwarf Fortress, which of course I'm using because I'm on the Dwarf Fortress website.  That shouldn't be a problem in using the image on another site, right?

Certainly not! I mean, even fan art for an existing game would be fine, and that would include even more inspirations/material from the source.

[Sir Knight]

While I have you here: is there any way to drag or "nudge" the contents of a layer?  That is, not drag the canvas view but the art content.  Cut-and-paste is slow, which is why Photoshop (et al.) gives us the nudge command.

[Kyzrati]

Yep, was added about a year ago. From the changelog:

Image shifting with wrapping (Ctrl-Arrow/Numpad or Ctrl-Shift-Arrow/Numpad for single layer)

So it'll even automate the wrapping process if you need to draw a continuous scene of some sort, e.g.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The 20-page manual describes a ton of features that are not found in the simple help/info page within REXPaint itself. But to get the general idea just check out the long list of keyboard commands at the end of it

[Sir Knight]

Thank you!

[Kyzrati]

No problem, let me know if you need any other features! I'm too busy to work on major features right now (though I do have a long list of stuff I want to eventually add...), but I do occasionally add requests if they're really easy. The RP forums have links to patches that add little user-requested features which have been requested since the last release. They'll become a part of 1.04.

[Sir Knight]

No problem, let me know if you need any other features!

Well, you asked, and you also liked the "fade effect" on that image, so . . .

I don't know what the existing term for such a thing is in Photoshop, but is there a feature for hovering a "blob of color-ness" on a higher layer, applying its color to everything visible on the lower layer?  That would be the proper way to do a fade effect if possible.

[Kyzrati]

Haha, you and I are definitely on the same page. In recent months I, too, have wanted to be able to this a number of times

While it's already possible to make similar changes via image-wide color swaps, area-specific adjustments are beyond the scope of what it was designed to do. REXPaint was originally built as a purely cell-focused editor, hence the UI's significant divergence from your average raster graphics software. Adding such a feature would require a new tool or (more likely) a whole set of new tools or even a new mode...

So yeah I'm definitely thinking about this, and it's a possible part of the future UI expansion I want to get to, though not in the near term. Thanks for bringing it up