X-Troll / Eclipse Block Editor

This file is available from http://www.edv-rudolf.de/xtroll/

(c) 1991-2003 Heinz Rudolf. All rights reserved.

This product can be copied freely and used for private 
purposes. However its not allowed to be sold or put into 
compilations of any kind. If you have any suggestions or 
bug-reports send them to xtroll@edv-rudolf.de.

This editor is the deluxe version for Eclipse Software Design, 
it was used on many games and had been developed for designing 
the levels of Lethal Xcess. The original version was coded by 
Blue Devil / Gigabyte Crew, but it was slow and had many flaws,
so Cyclone / X-Troll decided to improve it. The 1st thing that
was rewritten, was the screen-rendering routine, which was 
originally done in GFA-Basic like the whole editor. In this 
version the screen is rendered in pure assembler which means 
its better to handle and got much better responses.


The improved and completely redesigned editor has many 
advanced features:

- supports *.NEO, *.PI1 and *.IFF files for all picture file 
  operations 
- importing blocks from pictures 
- converting pictures to block objects 
- deleting double blocks 
- deleting unused blocks 
- merging blocks from another level-file 
- integrated workscreen for precombining larger bock objects 
- save screenshots 
- integrated support for a graphic-tool to paint new blocks 
- automated calculation of map-size from various parameters 
- capable of importing/exporting byte-maps if less than 256 
  blocks are used 
- advanced disk support (format disk, create folder, delete 
  file) 
- integrated help system and key information 
- automatic resolution change between low and medium 
  resolution 


Block Editor Short Reference 

This brief summary gives you all the keys that can be used 
within the Block Editor. It's no complete manual, but I hope
you will find it helpful. 


Map Editor Key Commands 

ESC		exit to main menu 
HELP		show help screen 
CURSOR		scroll map blockwise 
CTRL CURSOR	scroll map pagewise 
SHIFT CURSOR	jump to end of map 
G 		get block from current map position 
SPACE		select block from blockset 
+ - 		increase/decrease block number 
CTRL 0-9 	set jump marker to current map position 
ALT 0-9 	get jump marker an jump to marker position 
J 		jump to coordinate 
BACKSPACE  	cut block object 
UNDO 		block object on/off 
H 		hide block object on/off 
F 		fill block object with selected block 
R 		random fill block object with selected blocks 
W 		show work screen 
N 		call painting utility (NEOchrome) 
RETURN or ENTER	show current picture 
L 		load picture 
S 		save snapshot from current map position 
B 		convert current picture into block object 
U 		zoom map 
M 		show zoomed map 
C 		delete/insert columns 
Z 		delete/insert rows 


Workscreen Key Commands 

ESC  		exit to map 
HELP  		show this screen 
L 		load workscreen 
S 		save workscreen 
C 		clear workscreen 
BACKSPACE   	cut block object from workscreen 

Select Block Key Commands 

ESC  		exit to map 
HELP  		show this screen 
UP / DOWN	scroll blocks blockwise 
INSERT  	insert empty block at current position 
DELETE  	insert empty block at current position 
C 		cut workblock 
P 		paste workblock 
E 		edit workblock 
O 		overlay block to workblock 
L 		load picture with blocks 
S 		save visible blocks as picture 
N 		call painting utility 
A 		add new blocks from current picture 


Pixel Editor Key Commands 

ESC   		exit 
HELP   		show help screen 
C 		clear workblock 
F 		fill workblock with color 1 
H 		flip workblock horizontally 
V 		flip workblock vertically 

LEVEL-FILE-FORMAT 

There are three files for each level, they are divided into a 
header file (*.LVL), a file containing the map objects (*.MOB)
and the blockmap itself (*.MAP). 

The file with the *.LVL extension is the header file and 
contains the following information. 

Adress No  Type  Content / Description 
$0000   1  long  "ECLP" Magic Key 
$0004   1  long  "0000" Version Information 
$0008   1  word  number of map objects in *.MOB file 
$000A   1  word  map width 
$000C   1  word  map height 
$000E   1  word  number [>0] of colour palettes following 
$0010  10  word  colour palettes with $10 words each 
        1  word  number of following palette switches 
        1  word  y-position of palette switch 
        1  word  ID-number of used palette 
       20  word  jump markers x / y coordinates 
        1  word  game screen width 
        1  word  game screen height 
        1  word  x scrollspeed 
        1  word  y scrollspeed 
        1  word  number of vbls in game 
        1  word  vertical refresh in game 
        4  word  internal coordinate information 

The map object file contains the number of blocks specified 
within the header file. The blocks are 16 px squares in 4 
planes, so each block consumes 16 lines with 16 px in 4 
bitplanes (bytes), that's a total of 128 bytes per block. 
Each single bock is stored in one go.

The mapfile itself consists of an array with [.w] block 
numbers in it. The size is given within the header file.


(c) 1991 Heinz Rudolf (aka Cyclone / X-Troll)