


			MAPTOOL BY DARKLITE
			-------------------
		
		
		  Written by Glen Cumming in 1992
		 + couple of routines by Stuart Law
	 
	 

WHY ?
---
	
This map editor has been written for use in our
next game. For the last two games that we wrote I quickly
knocked up an editor that was crap - every time I wanted 
to use it I had	to modify it to make it do the things I wanted.

We decided to write our current game properly so I decided that
we would need a properly written map editor.

Things were made slightly easier by the fact that as a small
part of our college project I had written a button and window
system that could be simply integrated into any program i.e no
system calls or anything. This gave a good basis for building
the editor.

FLICKER
-------

Yes there is quite a lot of flicker and jerky scrolling in
the editor - usually I would not allow this but writing
custom scroll routines would destroy by button and window 
methodology and would take some time - something I do not
have right now - all the coding for the editor and game
is done in a period of two hours after work and after putting
in 12 hours work I am knackered ( I expect Stu is as well ).

So if anyone likes this version of the editor and I get some
nice feedback I might release a new version where it will be
a lot smoother!

WHATS IT WRITTEN IN
-------------------

As I had deciede we would do this game properly I went out and
bought Devpac III so the editor is of course written in 68000.



INSTRUCTIONS
============

Where do I start??????


'GRAPHICS' Button 
-----------------

The system allows the user to load in four pictures, these must be 
done in dpaint and must be a lo-res screen - no bigger in x or y.
Although the user specifies how many planes for the map pictures
with any number of planes (1-5) can be loaded. It is possible
that some people may design graphics for a game in 16 colours allowing 
the bottom eight for background and top eight for somethig else.
It also allows piccys to be loaded changed and saved again without
having to faff around with options.

When copying the blocks to the map screen only the number specified will
be copied!!!!


SAVING
------

Pictures that are saved back to disk in IFF are saved in uncompressed
format - this is becuase up to now I have never had to write a
compression routine for pics and I did not have the time ( next version 
if there is one - honest).

