Suggestions for AGS - editable shapes on backgrounds

[Reid]

Hi,

I was using the latest version (Guy Fawkes edition) and I noticed that I can't edit hotspots, regions and other areas created for my rooms after I initially created them. I'd love to see AGS treat each drawn shape as a separate object that I can click on and manipulate in position, size, shape and rotation.

For example, as a user, I want to create a rectangle hotspot on a background but then at a later time click on it and drag it into a new position and then manipulate some point handles on the four corners to resize it or change its shape to trapezoid. This is similar to how you can edit layers in Adobe Photoshop.

I also would like to be able to import background images and KEEP the walkable areas regions, hotspots, etc. If I can edit them as suggested above, I can then move and resize them to fit the new background. I believe this would speed up iteration for development nicely.

Yes, I'm aware of the import mask background feature, but I don't have a good understanding of the palette restrictions.

Thanks!

-Reid

[Ghost]

To edit a shape you can select the 0 colour and then take away from an existing shape by "drawing" with the Null Colour. You can also delete a hotspot completely and start to draw it all over again.

I never use the feature myself; only for really plain and rough designs. I import masks because they are more "pixel perfect". I daresay most people here use a mix of both- editor shapes and masks.

[Khris]

Reid, draw the masks using up to 16 sufficently different colors, reduce the pic to 16 colors, save it, import it.

[Gilbert]

For example, as a user, I want to create a rectangle hotspot on a background but then at a later time click on it and drag it into a new position and then manipulate some point handles on the four corners to resize it or change its shape to trapezoid. This is similar to how you can edit layers in Adobe Photoshop.

This is not practically possible considering how the areas are implemented. The areas are not stored as shapes having vector boundaries (like imagemaps in webpages), instead each kind of areas is stored as one bitmap, with the colour of each pixel corresponding to the area number. Improving the drawing tools to have more drawing functions like graphics package is not a bad idea, however as we have the 'import mask' feature you can always draw the masks in your favourite programme instead (better, on a layer on top of the background image). The tools in the editor are rather basic and are intended for simple operations only at the moment.

Yes, I'm aware of the import mask background feature, but I don't have a good understanding of the palette restrictions.

Just draw it with your favourite painting programme and save it as a 256 colour image, making sure that the used colours are in the early slots of the palette, which depends on your graphics package, usually like KhrisMUC wrote, reducing the image to 16 colours first and then change it to 256 colours should work (it's safer to use 256 colour images than 16 colour ones as they may not be supported well), but note that in case you're editting hotspot masks, as you can have up to 30 hotspots, if you really need that much, don't convert it to 16 colours first, if your graphics programme can convert it to have virtually any number of colours try converting it to 32 colours and save it as 256 colours.

[Khris]

And since hotspots are usually not connected to each other, drawing them using one (or a few) color(s) will work fine, as one can still fill them in AGS using the proper color.

[Reid]

D'oh, you've all beaten my dream out of me. I'll try the import mask feature sometime, :]

[Quappe]

I agree

[Scorpiorus]

I think this implementation is based on the idea that, generally, masks do tightly relate to the current background image and whenever you alter your background image in a certain way the masks should also be updated. And yeah, because of this it could be a good idea to generate the masks with a program you draw your backgrounds in.