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FE Map Creator (also generates random maps)


BwdYeti
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FEMapGenerator.png

Fig A: a generated, random map

An FE tailored map creator, that can also generate random tiles to fill in empty space in your map or create an entirely random map. The generation rules can be edited, too. It also allows locking specific tiles, such as a castle or mountain range, that the generator should not modify and merely build around, as well as drawing in generic terrain types, which it will turn into fitting tiles of that type during generation:

MapGenPinExample.gif

Fig B: pin some tiles in place, let the program generate the rest around them

MapGenTerrainExample.gif

Fig C: miracles

Supports opening and saving both .mar arrays and Tiled files, for inserting the maps into roms or adding in tile changes after the base map is finished. It can also create an approximation a map based on an image and the tileset used, if you just have a picture and not the data file.

The vanilla GBA FE maps and tilesets, as well as map generation rules for each tileset, are included in the download so you can immediately jump into map making.

Special thanks to Pi for ripping all the GBA FE maps, which I referenced to generate the initial tileset rules.

FE Map Creator download zip

You'll need .NET Framework 4 to run it, if the program doesn't work you probably need to download that:

.NET Framework

Edited by BwdYeti
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I know a lot of people were complaining about this, mostly those who wanted to stroke their own epeen or pawn off their maps for a petty buck, but I know for sure that I appreciate a tool like this.

As it stands, it's a good way for people to get started, and as does FEXNA as a whole feels like a more approachable format to make/hack FE games, this tool will benefit those who are taking their first steps.

Now we just need a mug maker... No, go get mine if you need some generics to get you started...

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I actually did bring up a random mug maker at one point. It's not really doable, but the exception is if everyone in the fandom collaborated and made or spliced pieces of mugs, like a base body, hair, eyes, mouth, frames, etc, an then we combined it into a program similar to Rpg Maker VX Ace has. It wouldn't be random, but you could mix and match pieces and alter colors, plus people could keep releasing more new pieces in successive updates.

If anyone wants to try it, go for it.

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I actually did bring up a random mug maker at one point. It's not really doable, but the exception is if everyone in the fandom collaborated and made or spliced pieces of mugs, like a base body, hair, eyes, mouth, frames, etc, an then we combined it into a program similar to Rpg Maker VX Ace has. It wouldn't be random, but you could mix and match pieces and alter colors, plus people could keep releasing more new pieces in successive updates.

If anyone wants to try it, go for it.

I wouldn't mind trying it, been thinking of doing things like this since I first started doing FE sprites and even just taking parts of existing sprites and having them for other people to splice with.

Only problems I could think of would be aliasing, shading between parts and conflicting sizes and proportions which isn't an issue in map making but would fuck up a decent mug easily.

I suppose you could do a thing where you get a base mug like a mannequin, then have parts specifically made for that body type...

I remember Aeo had a blank mug that I use to mess with all the time a couple years back, but if anyone was up for making a couple of blank canvases I'd be more than willing to put in some parts from my mugs to make it work.

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Yeah, you'd need a base "nude" frame, then multiple armor pieces or simply whole torso armors. After that, facial features, and once you've got all that down... you make another base mug body, rinse and repeat. You'd also want male/female versions of each to give greater diversity.

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Yeah, you'd need a base "nude" frame, then multiple armor pieces or simply whole torso armors. After that, facial features, and once you've got all that down... you make another base mug body, rinse and repeat. You'd also want male/female versions of each to give greater diversity.

So you'd have a list sort of like,

Child,

Young adult. (Light, Medium, Large, Fat.)

Old adult. (Light, Medium, Large, Fat.)

Elderly. (Light, Medium, Large, Fat.)

And then male/female options for both.

So that'd be, uh, 'bout 26 bases? Haha.

You might be able to shave off 6 by not doing fat, but I feel that needing light and medium is a must, sort of like the difference between an Erk and a Kent, I suppose. Wallace would be an example for large I guess.

(Might also somehow be able to get away with having a single base for young, old and elderly but have the age prominantly shown in the facial features, so you'd pick the male base then click the "elderly eyes" for example.)

You'd also need a way to modify colours, or we'd be up to our neck in different dudes all wearing the same armour with the same colour.

Edited by NICKTâ„¢
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does it do the tile changes too?

No. It's more for creating the base map.

I remember yeti specifically mentioning support for that but I never tried using it. So, maybe.

If I mentioned anything it was reading the Tiled ones when I was processing Pi's files.

I know a lot of people were complaining about this, mostly those who wanted to stroke their own epeen or pawn off their maps for a petty buck, but I know for sure that I appreciate a tool like this.

idk why. It can't really generate indoor maps at all, and full maps it makes are barely playable and work better to spark inspiration; and for FE maps it's at least as functional as Mappy on the manual map making end, plus you can have it fill in mountains or rivers or whatever to save you time. Think of it like the ingame map maker in AW in that regard.

It doesn't 'obsolete' map artists, if anything it's more useful to them than to anyone else.

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So, for FE8 maps that require tile changes, this effectively won't work at all? (As you need to use Tiled to do map changes in FE8 (or last I was told), but you can use Mappy for FE7. And the first post only says "open Tiled", not "and save"...)

Not that I'm actively needing this clarification myself, but if anyone doing FE8 work wants to do tile changes, then for that map, they obviously would not be able use this at all for that one, which would be handy for them to know...

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YOU. ARE. A. GOD. One of the things i hated in hacking was coming up with my own maps, I know I sound lazy, but I mean come on being creative is hard. It took me mabey a month or 2 to make and polish my prolouge map for project Juan, and even then it was still not all that great. Thank you SO much :D

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I can't run it apparently. I have .net framework 4 too.

Any idea?

Not really. Does it give any error that could help?

Also, has anyone else had a similar issue, so we could try to establish a pattern?

So, for FE8 maps that require tile changes, this effectively won't work at all? (As you need to use Tiled to do map changes in FE8 (or last I was told), but you can use Mappy for FE7. And the first post only says "open Tiled", not "and save"...)

I guess. Can Tiled open mar arrays?
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Not really. Does it give any error that could help?

Also, has anyone else had a similar issue, so we could try to establish a pattern?

It just says that it stopped working when I launch the program and ask if I could send a report to the Windows developer.

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I can't run the program either, here's some error info if it helps any, and I (regretfully) use Windows 8.1

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: FE_Map_Creator.exe
Problem Signature 02: 1.0.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 5485d393
Problem Signature 04: FE_Map_Creator
Problem Signature 05: 1.0.0.0
Problem Signature 06: 5485d393
Problem Signature 07: 28
Problem Signature 08: 15
Problem Signature 09: System.IO.FileNotFoundException
OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.768.101
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 5861
Additional Information 2: 5861822e1919d7c014bbb064c64908b2
Additional Information 3: 84a0
Additional Information 4: 84a09ea102a12ee665c500221db8c9d6

is there some file locating issue or something? ah well

FE4 is my game but a map generator could be pretty handy for brainstorming purposes (I can just copy stuff into the map editor anyway) and besides, nothing beats painstaking handmade

Edited by Lamia
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I can't run the program either, here's some error info if it helps any

Alright, I made fixes based on this, so if this was the same issue it should be sorted out. Also I added support for saving in Tiled format (I think, I didn't actually try opening anything in Tiled but everything looks consistent)
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Cool.

@ discussion of its limitations that went on earlier:

I don't think people were trying to say it was a bad thing, just saying that the random generation wasn't great for certain things (indoor maps, as mentioned). It's definitely great for saving work on outdoor maps. I supposed if it could be coded to keep track of height, it could make some nice looking indoor maps. Coding that would also be a step closer to implementing height as a game mechanic, which would be cool.

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Alright, I made fixes based on this, so if this was the same issue it should be sorted out. Also I added support for saving in Tiled format (I think, I didn't actually try opening anything in Tiled but everything looks consistent)

It works now. Thanks.

Edit:

New problem rose after the fix. I can't load a tileset to use. It keep giving me an lengthy error prompting me to either attempt to continue with ignoring the error or quit.

See the end of this message for details on invoking

just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************

System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.

Parameter name: source

at System.Linq.Enumerable.Any[TSource](IEnumerable`1 source, Func`2 predicate)

at FE_Map_Creator.FE_Map_Creator_Form.load_tileset(String filename)

at FE_Map_Creator.FE_Map_Creator_Form.loadTilesetToolStripMenuItem_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem.OnClick(EventArgs e)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(EventArgs e)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEventInteractive(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)

at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)

at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)

at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)

at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown.WndProc(Message& m)

at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)

at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)

at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

************** Loaded Assemblies **************

mscorlib

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.18444 built by: FX451RTMGDR

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll

----------------------------------------

FE_Map_Creator

Assembly Version: 1.0.1.0

Win32 Version: 1.0.1.0

CodeBase: file:///C:/Users/Doug/Desktop/sprites/games/Fire%20Shell/Toolbox/FEMapCreator/FE_Map_Creator.exe

----------------------------------------

System.Windows.Forms

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.18408 built by: FX451RTMGREL

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll

----------------------------------------

System.Drawing

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.18408 built by: FX451RTMGREL

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll

----------------------------------------

System

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.34238 built by: FX452RTMGDR

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll

----------------------------------------

FEXNA_Library

Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0

CodeBase: file:///C:/Users/Doug/Desktop/sprites/games/Fire%20Shell/Toolbox/FEMapCreator/FEXNA_Library.DLL

----------------------------------------

System.Core

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.18408 built by: FX451RTMGREL

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Core/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Core.dll

----------------------------------------

System.Xml.Linq

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.18408 built by: FX451RTMGREL

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml.Linq/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.Linq.dll

----------------------------------------

System.Xml

Assembly Version: 4.0.0.0

Win32 Version: 4.0.30319.34234 built by: FX452RTMGDR

CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll

----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************

To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this

application or computer (machine.config) must have the

jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.

The application must also be compiled with debugging

enabled.

For example:

<configuration>

<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />

</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception

will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer

rather than be handled by this dialog box.

Edited by Fateborn
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Hmm... I fixed what caused that error, but while it looks like the previous fix is making it so that you don't crash, it's still not loading the tileset xml file it's supposed to. If so you'll be able to generate maps but not restrict tiles to specific terrain types.

After you load a tileset see what happens when you check 'Show terrain types?' on the tileset window.

ac06e78b62ec9fc36ec8613d2d65758a.png

Should look something like this

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