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Bmwsu
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Thursday, September 26 2013, 11:55 pm EST

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I just started making a cave and there are a couple things I've noticed: There is no undo/redo, and I cannot select the starting position with hot keys, and I have to have a tile selected in the menu on the right in order to use the delete key as an eraser.  I'll edit this post with anything else, if I notice it, but so far it feels great!


jebby
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Friday, September 27 2013, 6:18 am EST
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'Bmwsu' said:
I just started making a cave and there are a couple things I've noticed: There is no undo/redo, and I cannot select the starting position with hot keys, and I have to have a tile selected in the menu on the right in order to use the delete key as an eraser.  I'll edit this post with anything else, if I notice it, but so far it feels great!


Undo/Redo is on The List (of things to be done).

What do you mean by "select the starting position with hotkeys"? You should be able to select Hannah from the palette with #. Is there some other way of selecting Hannah in CSD's cavemaker?

Yeah, I noticed the Delete bug just after I uploaded 1.2.1 last night. I'll fix it in the next update once I've implemented enough things to actually make an update. I'll also move the Generate button down to the bottom so that it's far, far away from any of the others...

Thanks for pointing these things out.  
shos
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:55 am EST
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idea:
in the grid, bold every fifth line. that way it'll be easier to see what goes where in large caves. it should be easy to implement too.


soccerboy13542
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:25 pm EST
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so just started making a level with the new cavegen. first off: i don't really like the brush size options. i never place blocks down in a diamond form, only rectangles, and usually that's for just clearing out space. it becomes very tedious changing to the big brush, to delete parts, then switch to the small one just to clean it up.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:28 pm EST
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'shos' said:
idea:
in the grid, bold every fifth line. that way it'll be easier to see what goes where in large caves. it should be easy to implement too.


It probably would be easy to implement, though I don't quite understand the benefit. Could you elaborate further?

'soccerboy13542' said:
so just started making a level with the new cavegen. first off: i don't really like the brush size options. i never place blocks down in a diamond form, only rectangles, and usually that's for just clearing out space. it becomes very tedious changing to the big brush, to delete parts, then switch to the small one just to clean it up.


Turn off Circular Junctions to get rectangular brushes.
soccerboy13542
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:30 pm EST
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alright, that makes everything a lot easier.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
soccerboy13542
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:37 pm EST
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how do you change dimensions of a level once you're already started? how do you cut and paste blocks to move them to a different section of the cave?


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:40 pm EST
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'soccerboy13542' said:
how do you change dimensions of a level once you're already started? how do you cut and paste blocks to move them to a different section of the cave?


Afraid so. You make an interesting point though; that's not something I've considered. Shouldn't be difficult to implement.
soccerboy13542
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:43 pm EST
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is there a hotkey for "copy to clipboard"? i don't trust myself to not hit the generate button. or, i'm not sure how hard this is to implement, a pop-up would come up if you accidentally hit generate, and then after hitting generate twice in a row, the pop-up would go away until a change was made to any of the level.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Saturday, September 28 2013, 6:49 pm EST
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'soccerboy13542' said:
is there a hotkey for "copy to clipboard"? i don't trust myself to not hit the generate button. or, i'm not sure how hard this is to implement, a pop-up would come up if you accidentally hit generate, and then after hitting generate twice in a row, the pop-up would go away until a change was made to any of the level.


No, but hotkeys for Generate and Copy make a lot of sense. Will add those in the next update. I won't be adding any popups for Generate because I want the user to be able to press it as fast as they want when trying to produce a terrain structure they like through generation. The evil Generate button is going to be moved to the buttom in the next update.
shos
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Sunday, September 29 2013, 10:25 am EST
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how many times has it happened to you that you put an arrow somewhere and needed to go through the entire line to know where to place the other arrow? it'll just make it easier to notice what height stuff are or what culumn they're on; water levels, arrows, boulders, other falling stuff, etc.


jebby
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Sunday, September 29 2013, 12:41 pm EST
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'shos' said:
how many times has it happened to you that you put an arrow somewhere and needed to go through the entire line to know where to place the other arrow? it'll just make it easier to notice what height stuff are or what culumn they're on; water levels, arrows, boulders, other falling stuff, etc.


I think I get what you're saying. Like the way the bold lines in graph paper help you measure stuff in 10s. Sure, I'll put it on the to-do list.
Teo
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Monday, September 30 2013, 11:45 am EST

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I think all of my additions I'd love to see in the next versions have been already said in the thread. I mean copying and pasting a selected area, changing the dimensions of the level and undo/redo. Still, that's an incredible tool. Waiting for more projects made in this program.
jebby
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Monday, September 30 2013, 3:27 pm EST
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'Teo' said:
I think all of my additions I'd love to see in the next versions have been already said in the thread. I mean copying and pasting a selected area, changing the dimensions of the level and undo/redo. Still, that's an incredible tool. Waiting for more projects made in this program.


Copy and Paste. That's a good idea. Most of the requested features are pretty easy to implement, but the problem is finding some time to commit to them as I'm currently beginning work on my Masters' thesis. Version 1.2.2 will come soon, I promise.
atvelonis
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Monday, September 30 2013, 9:26 pm EST
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A screenshot button might be useful, like F12 or something.


'jellsprout' said:
As a kid I always thought tennisballs looked delicious and I liked biting them. I still remember the feel of the fuzz on my teeth and tongue.
jebby
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 11:56 am EST
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'atvelonis' said:
A screenshot button might be useful, like F12 or something.


Hmm... maybe. I'm not sure how often people post screenshots of their caves though. Their best bet would probably involve using PrtScn and crop in Paint. It's not like Steam where you're playing a game and you want to capture a specific moment to share with your friends.

Seeing as you suggested it, when would you use a screenshot feature in CaveGen? Maybe there's some interesting usage that I'm missing.
atvelonis
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 1:01 pm EST
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I personally don't make HatPC levels, but if I did, I might use it for collaborations, or if I was making a cave in the shape of something specific like a potato.


'jellsprout' said:
As a kid I always thought tennisballs looked delicious and I liked biting them. I still remember the feel of the fuzz on my teeth and tongue.
canadianstickdeath
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 3:22 pm EST

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Jebby if you're clicking the grid over and over again to place spikes, you're doing it wrong. Typically I like to hover the mouse over the spike and move around the grid with the arrow keys, and then double click. You can also use insert if you don't like all the clicking. I wanted to use enter but couldn't for some reason, though I forget what, but then insert is close to delete so it's not so bad. Anyway you can also use alt+w and alt+m and just go keyboard-only. You know all this but to say it takes 9 clicks is really about the slowest way you could go about adding those spikes in. If I'd had designed the Cavemaker from scratch, I would have done the whole select tile, then click the grid to set it thing, but I didn't want to weird people out. I'm not sure how setting a grid of tiles would have worked in that case. Something involving click-drag. If I'd gone that route I guess I would have looked up how to do what I wanted.

I included the shockwave error in case somebody loaded a cave with one in it, it would show up and say what it was. But then it was like, might as well make it a selectable tile if I'm going that far.

The main problem I have with the current Cavemaker is that the spikes and the terrain are not both visible on the tile select bar at the same time. I don't plan to ever tackle improving the Cavemaker again, though, but just putting the tiles in a grid like you have is a pretty obvious thing. Again this was a result of improving the existing TNT Cavemaker, and not going my own route.

What I like about my Cavemaker is that the viewing area is quite large. That's a lame thing but IDK I like the look of a cave when it's opened in it. And then I like that the ability to copy-paste between caves is as easy as it is.
jebby
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 4:02 pm EST
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'canadianstickdeath' said:
Jebby if you're clicking the grid over and over again to place spikes, you're doing it wrong. Typically I like to hover the mouse over the spike and move around the grid with the arrow keys, and then double click. You can also use insert if you don't like all the clicking. I wanted to use enter but couldn't for some reason, though I forget what, but then insert is close to delete so it's not so bad. Anyway you can also use alt+w and alt+m and just go keyboard-only. You know all this but to say it takes 9 clicks is really about the slowest way you could go about adding those spikes in. If I'd had designed the Cavemaker from scratch, I would have done the whole select tile, then click the grid to set it thing, but I didn't want to weird people out. I'm not sure how setting a grid of tiles would have worked in that case. Something involving click-drag. If I'd gone that route I guess I would have looked up how to do what I wanted.


Since my "9 clicks" post, I've learnt from other people about all the shortcuts in your Cavemaker. I honestly didn't know about these shortcuts as I've only used the new Cavemaker to make a couple of caves (1984 and Predator, I think, and that was years ago). My bad for making statements with nothing to back them up.

'canadianstickdeath' said:
I included the shockwave error in case somebody loaded a cave with one in it, it would show up and say what it was. But then it was like, might as well make it a selectable tile if I'm going that far.

The main problem I have with the current Cavemaker is that the spikes and the terrain are not both visible on the tile select bar at the same time. I don't plan to ever tackle improving the Cavemaker again, though, but just putting the tiles in a grid like you have is a pretty obvious thing. Again this was a result of improving the existing TNT Cavemaker, and not going my own route.

What I like about my Cavemaker is that the viewing area is quite large. That's a lame thing but IDK I like the look of a cave when it's opened in it. And then I like that the ability to copy-paste between caves is as easy as it is.


You don't have to defend your Cavemaker; everyone here thinks it's a great tool, myself included. I totally understand that you were trying to stay faithful to the original. CaveGen is my own take on a cavemaker; I've tried to implement certain features in a slightly more intuitive way (at least to me) than the original design, plus some extra things that I thought would be cool/useful. There are still a load of things that your Cavemaker does better.

Seeing as you're online again, could you share some of your knowledge from experience with building the Cavemaker? My main issue is with rendering speed. Drawing a grid of images is, at least in WPF using C#, pretty slow and means that a panning feature would be incredibly laggy. Right now, even resizing a window with an 80x80 in it takes at least a second to complete. The only way I could cut down the lag was by replacing terrain images with grey rectangles (this cut down rendering time substantially due to the number of terrain images that are in the average cave grid - all of these were now being rendered super quickly as simple filled polygons). I realise that Java (and presumably Swing?) are very different to C# and WPF, but did you ever have to figure out a workaround to enable smooth panning across maps with loads of images? For instance, I can make a huge cave in your cavemaker and pan across it like a hot knife through butter. Any funky caching techniques?

canadianstickdeath
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 4:22 pm EST

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Can't really help you. I didn't use any tricks as far as I remember. I remember thinking it was probably going to be really slow, and then it just wasn't. Something in there probably has to be doing something smart, but IDK what it might be. You probably know more about what you're doing than I knew about what I did. It's not too hard to use an API and then just chuck some code together in a way that doesn't have to make any sense to anybody but yourself. My code is there inside the jar file if you want to take a look at it. It's really messy.

The slowest thing my program does is generate the cave code. Large caves will take a second or two, and that was after some work trying to cut down on concatenations. And then saving and loading happen instantly, lol. I feel like I'm missing something.

There are some things I never did get around to doing in my Cavemaker. The thing that was always on the to-do list but never got done was to improve the level properties dialog, which was always supposed to be temporary. I remember I did something for an assignment in university and ran out of time so I just threw all the components into a flow layout, lol. I made a bit more of an effort here but I never really got what I wanted. The plan was to combine all the options and stuff into a tabbed dialog along with it. I don't like how you have to go into a menu for every single option you want to change.

I was worried about memory though. When I allow you to open as many caves as you want and make whatever size you want and then have infinite undo... you can bet stuff is gonna break. I put some limits on some stuff but I'm sure you can still run out of memory if you tried. The undo would have been better if I'd just saved the changes that you made instead of the entire grid every time, but there didn't seem to be much point in that when the change you could be making is copy-pasting a completely different grid.

I'll keep an eye out for suggestions for your Cavemaker if I think of anything. One nifty thing in mine that I'm sure nobody ever uses is the ability to load a cave right off the somebody's account or off of the interguild itself (as long as Livio never changes where the levels are saved... he did that to me once >_>).
soccerboy13542
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 6:12 pm EST
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i remember a user, i forget who, that made a video of them making a cave. i've been tempted to do that just to show what i do.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
Bmwsu
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 6:19 pm EST

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Wasn't that Ckjr?  Nope, looked it up and it's Jebby and Kro.


soccerboy13542
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 6:22 pm EST
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i think that it'd be fun haha


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.
jebby
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 6:35 pm EST
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'canadianstickdeath' said:
Can't really help you. I didn't use any tricks as far as I remember. I remember thinking it was probably going to be really slow, and then it just wasn't. Something in there probably has to be doing something smart, but IDK what it might be. You probably know more about what you're doing than I knew about what I did. It's not too hard to use an API and then just chuck some code together in a way that doesn't have to make any sense to anybody but yourself. My code is there inside the jar file if you want to take a look at it. It's really messy.

The slowest thing my program does is generate the cave code. Large caves will take a second or two, and that was after some work trying to cut down on concatenations. And then saving and loading happen instantly, lol. I feel like I'm missing something.

There are some things I never did get around to doing in my Cavemaker. The thing that was always on the to-do list but never got done was to improve the level properties dialog, which was always supposed to be temporary. I remember I did something for an assignment in university and ran out of time so I just threw all the components into a flow layout, lol. I made a bit more of an effort here but I never really got what I wanted. The plan was to combine all the options and stuff into a tabbed dialog along with it. I don't like how you have to go into a menu for every single option you want to change.

I was worried about memory though. When I allow you to open as many caves as you want and make whatever size you want and then have infinite undo... you can bet stuff is gonna break. I put some limits on some stuff but I'm sure you can still run out of memory if you tried. The undo would have been better if I'd just saved the changes that you made instead of the entire grid every time, but there didn't seem to be much point in that when the change you could be making is copy-pasting a completely different grid.

I'll keep an eye out for suggestions for your Cavemaker if I think of anything. One nifty thing in mine that I'm sure nobody ever uses is the ability to load a cave right off the somebody's account or off of the interguild itself (as long as Livio never changes where the levels are saved... he did that to me once >_>).


I'm sure I'll figure out how to speed it up eventually. I'm pretty sure it's the API I'm using; I've heard you can embed OpenGL in WPF applications, so I might give that a try to see if that's more efficient.

The direct-from-account import feature is very cool and I only heard about it when reading through the New Cavemaker thread a couple of weeks ago (I was trying to see if I could learn anything from your dev process). I'm reluctant to adopt it in my own as I don't want to be reliant on an external source that could change in the future.



'soccerboy13542' said:
i remember a user, i forget who, that made a video of them making a cave. i've been tempted to do that just to show what i do.


Was it this video by any chance?

soccerboy13542
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Tuesday, October 1 2013, 6:41 pm EST
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Yup, that was it.


'Livio' said:
You know, I was thinking of getting an internship at Microsoft, but I'm not sure I want their lameness to rub off on me.

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