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Yimmy
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Saturday, September 21 2013, 9:20 pm EST
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i finally got it, and here's a (somewhat random) idea. since people make dynamite caves (like in my comp) you can make an option to change terrain to dynamite... /outofhere


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Bmwsu
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Saturday, September 21 2013, 11:22 pm EST

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You could just copy to the clipboard, paste it into an editor, and then replace all x's with "|".  Problem solved!


Yaya
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Saturday, September 21 2013, 11:31 pm EST

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The only two caves I can think of that are completely made of dynamite rather than terrain are Kaboom Room and Platformyte (yes, I totally remember). There's probably a handful more, but it isn't exactly a popular cavemaking technique.



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shos
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Sunday, September 22 2013, 1:40 am EST
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Hey so uh.

Idea.

what if...you could choose what tile you're painting? it would be an awesome thing, might even be able to replace the cavemaker in some ways.


jebby
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Sunday, September 22 2013, 2:16 pm EST
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'shos' said:
Hey so uh.

Idea.

what if...you could choose what tile you're painting? it would be an awesome thing, might even be able to replace the cavemaker in some ways.


Building a new cavemaker is actually a long-term goal of mine. I could write an essay on different ways in which the existing one could be improved, especially in terms of its usability. The tedious nature of placing tiles in the current cavemaker is one of the reasons why I struggle to find motivation to make HATPC levels now. And don't get me started on the uploading/testing process.

Think about how you place tiles in the cavemaker. There's a lot of needless clicking involved. Imagine you're trying to create three spikes in a diagonal line. That's 9 clicks: click tile, double-click spike, click tile, double-click spike, click tile, double-click spike. A much more sensible option would to see the list of tiles as a palette that you go to whenever you want to change the tile you're painting. I'd also get rid of the need to double-click the palette. So that diagonal line would only require 4 clicks: click spike, click tile, click tile, click tile. Or using the CaveGen spike brush, a click and a drag over terrain. Perhaps holding Shift down could activate an eraser while painting. I'm not criticising CSD's great work on improving the cavemaker; my issue is with the design of the original Neopets version that he built upon.

Regarding your CaveGen suggestion, that would certainly be doable. The only obstacle for that feature would be to start using images instead of rectangles for tiles. I did this in early versions, but it made cave generation too slow at large dimensions. I'm confident I can find a nice solution for this though.

'Later conversation' said:
'soccerboy13542' said:
For Cavemaking, when making spikes i usually hit alt+m alt+w or copy and paste rather than doubleclicking. it makes it a LOT faster.


Fair enough; I guessed there may have been hotkeys of some kind, but I didn't know them myself. I don't feel anyone should need to use hotkeys to be able to make their levels in the most efficient way though.

'yimmy7' said:
yeah, plus the hotkeys are spread out all over the keyboard. it's better if they're all close


The hotkeys correspond to the symbols for each tile. For experienced cavemakers, I imagine this is probably quite easy to use. I can't think of a better way of doing hotkeys for a cavemaker.



Any other feedback? Has anyone actually used CaveGen to start building a cave? Which features have been the most useful?
shos
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Sunday, September 22 2013, 3:39 pm EST
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I believe CSD has some long list of stuff-to-add-to-the-cavemaker, which he just doesn't have the time/will to add.


jebby
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Sunday, September 22 2013, 9:15 pm EST
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Started working on shos' "ALL THE TILES" feature. The first thing I've done is to implement window resizing; it seems ridiculous having a fixed window size when there's so many things inside it (in preparation for a tile palette). Is quite a bit easier to draw stuff precisely on the cave in a maximised window. I also added a sexy black background that the cave display always stays in the middle of.

Maximised Window Goodness
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I can't guarantee that window resizing will be a feature that comes along soon. The reason for this is because WPF handles window resizing and re-rendering of large numbers of shapes rather slowly. Even on my NASA PC, grabbing the corner of the window and waving it around results in some pretty laggy window resizing. I've yet to test it on my ancient steam-powered laptop, so I don't know how horrendous it's going to be on less powerful computers. God knows how it's going to cope when I ask it to render images rather than squares; I may well have to revamp the UI to improve its rendering efficiency. Or learn to optimise my code better. I'm pretty sure most of the issue is with WPF though; I've seen a lot of people on Stack Overflow complaining about its lagginess.
jebby
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Monday, September 23 2013, 6:26 pm EST
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So now you can make full caves in CaveGen...



The design of this is subject to change and I need to ensure that all the tiles behave correctly. Stuff I'm about to work on before releasing:
- Have some means of showing which tile is selected in the palette (by highlighting it or something).
- Add a cursor so you know where you're painting.
- Allow you to specify cave name, etc.
- Enable you to save your caves.

EDIT: The cave above is not mine. It's a random cave I found in the level database: Back Again? By Bmwsu  
shos
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 1:13 am EST
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looks very cool indeed.

I suggest the bold in thick red the surrounding lines of the tile that is currently selected.


also, what does the S, C, red X, and top row's three rightmost tiles mean?


Isa
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 2:29 am EST
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I think the topright are spiked cave brushes?

I'm curious about the red X, myself. W should be Water Pocket, S is Secret Area. Is X Shockwave Error?
jebby
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 8:16 am EST
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Topmost icons are Terrain, Space (or Eraser), Spike Filler, Spike Digger and Spike Remover. I'll probably improve the spike icons to make it more obvious what they mean.

S stands for Secret Area. C stands for Clone (or Fake Crate). Red X stands for Shockwave Error. W stands for Water Start. All of these are consistent with the icons used in the Cavemaker. All icons will have tooltips for those who aren't sure what they are.
Isa
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 1:01 pm EST
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I totally forgot about the existence of water taps. =p
shos
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 2:56 pm EST
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I never understood why we always include an option for 'shockwave error'.


jebby
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 2:57 pm EST
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'shos' said:
I never understood why we always include an option for 'shockwave error'.


Beats me. I just put it in for fear of people complaining if it was removed.

By the way, I've made a lot of progress on doing the things I said I'd do in my last post. I'm about to start setting up New/Open/Save/Save As dialogs and then it should be ready for release.
jebby
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 2:59 pm EST
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'jebby' said:
'shos' said:
I never understood why we always include an option for 'shockwave error'.


Beats me. I just put it in for fear of people complaining if it was removed.

By the way, I've made a lot of progress on doing the things I said I'd do in my last post (two posts ago). I'm about to start setting up New/Open/Save/Save As dialogs and then it should be ready for release.
Isa
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 3:17 pm EST
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'shos' said:
I never understood why we always include an option for 'shockwave error'.

We = CSD. Nobody ever requested it, he just included it for the sake of completion, I think. =p
jebby
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 8:13 pm EST
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Today, I worked for 11 hours (proof here lol), in which I managed to make some nice progress on the all-singing, all-dancing mini cavemaker thing that CaveGen seems to be turning into. Stuff I did:
- Palette buttons that are selected are now highlighted so you can see what kind of tile you're going to be painting.
- Cursor lights up any tiles you're about to paint so you know where you're painting.
- I implemented CSD-style hotkeys so you can select palette tiles from the keyboard.
- I added tooltips to the palette to make it clearer what each icon means.
- Enabled cave name, terrain type and water type to be specified.
- Enabled cave saving and opening.

Tomorrow, I will:
- Add Ctrl+N, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+S shortcuts for New, Open and Save.
- Add a settings file so that CaveGen remembers the last cave you were using.
- Show some kind of dialog that asks whether you want to save changes before opening/quitting. Not guaranteed; not sure how difficult this'll be just yet.
- Have some kind of validation system for text files that are opened. If you feed it random text files, it breaks it's little mind.
- Add a setting that allows you to turn off the default folder that caves are saved to. Currently, CaveGen will relentlessly put a Caves folder in your MyDocuments whether you like it or not. Save/Open dialogs always open up in that folder too, which can get annoying if you're opening lots of files elsewhere.
- Test CaveGen on my old laptop to see how horrendously slow window resizing is on there. It can get pretty bad on my desktop with large caves, but is acceptable otherwise.

In the future, I will:
- Enforce limits on the number of certain tiles (doors, for example). You can currently paint Hannah all over the map if you're into that kind of thing. Doesn't seem an important enough feature to delay the upcoming release.
- Start moving the rather hideous UI into a menu system. Best it be hidden away so it can't scare anyone.
- Zoom with Ctrl and Mouse3. Maybe some scrolling with Mouse3 as well.
- A load of other stuff that I'm too tired to get from my notebook right now.

So yeah, it's not quite got all the functionality of CSD's cavemaker yet, but I'd say it's a damn good alternative as it stands. Should almost certainly release tomorrow unless something apocalyptic happens. Maybe the last version for a while as I have uni starting again soon. Here's what it currently looks like when you're about to put a blob of treasure in the middle of For_Seasons by Ckjr (note that Imgur nerfed the quality of that image - it doesn't look that bad. Almost though).  
Yimmy
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Tuesday, September 24 2013, 8:48 pm EST
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it. looks. amazing. in my opinion the look is better than csd's cavemaker. csd's is annoying to to the very large amount of windows, and it mostly just looks boring. all the sudden i feel i'm judging this off the green on top and bottom, so ignore this post


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jebby
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Wednesday, September 25 2013, 3:43 pm EST
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Version 1.2 can be downloaded from HERE. Please bear some things in mind:
- Because CaveGen now reads and writes to files, it'll ask you for admin permission before you run it. Don't be scared off by this; it'll only be accessing cave files that you specify as well as a settings file in it its own directory. I don't recall CSD's cavemaker ever needing admin permission; if anyone knows why this is, please let me know.
- I had to alter the installer slightly due to the shortcuts it was producing not working for whatever reason. It works on both my machines, but may not on yours. Please give me details on what happens if the install fails (it really shouldn't).
- On weaker computers, resizing the window can be SLOW. If you're making an 80x80 cave, I'd recommend you maximise the window and leave it like that. It should be fine for smaller caves, which are the best size for CaveGen until I implement zooming.
- I've added a lot of complicated features, so bugs are a definite possibility. I noticed that submarining would randomly occur on my old laptop and I have no idea why. Please give me full details on any bugs you encounter, especially those involving saving and opening.

To summarise new features:
- There is now a palette of all the tiles in the game that you can use to "paint" anything you like on to the cave grid. SpikeDigger/Filler/Remover are still there.
- You can specify the level name, terrain type and water type.
- There's now a cursor that shows you where you're about to paint.
- You can save and open caves from files. CaveGen remembers the last cave you were working on when you open up a new session.

NOTE: Hotkeys match the characters used in cave code (like in CSD's cavemaker). For example, the X key selects Terrain. S selects Space/Eraser. D selects Spike Digger. F selects SpikeFiller. R selects SpikeRemover.
Bmwsu
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Wednesday, September 25 2013, 4:11 pm EST

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This is just a small thing that I see, but I feel like the generate button should be moved down to below the generation settings.  I worry that I might misclick when going to save and accidentally generating something entirely new.  That's all I've noticed, but I'm hardly even a bug tester.  I will say that is makes me really want to make a cave again.


jebby
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Wednesday, September 25 2013, 4:32 pm EST
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'Bmwsu' said:
This is just a small thing that I see, but I feel like the generate button should be moved down to below the generation settings.  I worry that I might misclick when going to save and accidentally generating something entirely new.  That's all I've noticed, but I'm hardly even a bug tester.  I will say that is makes me really want to make a cave again.


Haha, great point! I don't have a particularly good eye for UI design. And if you want to make a cave with it, go make a cave with it - it's what I'd like to see right now after all the work I've put into it. To anyone who does, let me know what it's like to build a cave from start to finish. Stuff that worked well and stuff that didn't. Etc.
jebby
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Thursday, September 26 2013, 5:53 pm EST
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Hotkey Guide

File Shortcuts

Ctrl+N New File
Ctrl+O Open File
Ctrl+S Save File



Palette Selection Shortcuts

x Terrain
b Wooden Crate
k Steel Crate
o Boulder
s Space/Eraser
d SpikeDigger
f SpikeFiller
r SpikeRemover
Shift+= or + Treasure
Shift+6 or ^ Arrow Up
Shift+, or < Arrow Left
Shift+. or > Arrow Right
v Arrow Down
w Spike Down
m Spike Up
/ Dynamite
Shift+\ or | Steel Dynamite
[ Platform Left
= Platform Middle
] Platform Right
Shift+2 or “ Ladder
Shift+# or ~ Water Level
Shift+1 or ! Water Tap Crate
Shift+’ or @ Water Crate
t Water Start
. Air Pocket
# Hannah
Shift+d or D Door
n Tutorial Up
Shift+9 or ( Tutorial Left
Shift+0 or ) Tutorial Right
u Tutorial Down
l Heart Crate
g Gem Crate
z Secret Area
1 Enemy 1
2 Enemy 2
3 Enemy 3
4 Enemy 4
5 Enemy 5
c Clone
0 Shockwave Error




jebby
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Thursday, September 26 2013, 6:43 pm EST
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Cheeky little update for you: CaveGen 1.2.1
- Insert button can be used as alternative to LeftMouseButton for painting.
- Delete button erases any tiles inside the cursor.
- Generate and CopyToClipboard buttons swapped to prevent accidental regenerations when reaching for the Save button.
Yimmy
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Thursday, September 26 2013, 7:03 pm EST
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just i reminder that is most likely useless, but if a desktop shortcut for cavegen doesn't work, try installing it into program files. it worked for me


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jebby
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Thursday, September 26 2013, 7:16 pm EST
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Yeah, that's definitely something I can look in to.

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