NEXXT - a newer "NES Screen Tool"

[FrankenGraphics]

3.1.1 is up.

Mostly minor changes and a bugfix for saving 16k of chr at once.

But: also exposes the "quick multiline" on the [alt] key of pen and brush modes; otherwise normally a subfeature of the Line mode [N] hidden in the Line Toolbox [shift+F5].

[FrankenGraphics]

3.2.0 is up, introducing 'pattern paint' (currently fixed to a shimmer-free gradient strip), a couple well needed improvements to the CHR editor, metatile editor, and more.

blogpost here:
https://frankengraphics.itch.io/nexxt/d ... s-and-more

[FrankenGraphics]

3.3.0 is up!

in brief:
-"seams checker" mode for repeating patterns in chr editor
-Sorting actions are now selection aware, handy for small banks and whenever you want to protect some tiles from the sorting.
-bugfixes relating to drag-dropping groups of tiles
-bugfixes relating to lossy image import
-toolbox for 'pattern paint' mode (partial).
-*.dmp (mesen) support

https://frankengraphics.itch.io/nexxt/d ... s-and-more





Edit: hotfix 3.3.1 is up.
3.3.0 erroneously started on the Tiles [f3] tab. Now starts on the Screen [F1] tab as intended, to avoid confusion


Edit 2:
3.3.2 is up.

-fixes for "save 2 subpalette sets in 1 file"
-fix for drag-dropping tiles in mmc2 mode

[alekmaul]

I have perhaps two stupid questions
1) Is there a way to export map attribute table to clipboard? It seems that Canvas/Copy as Text/C code exports only the current screen, not the map attributes.
2) I created metatiles 2x2 for my screen, it works and I can see metatiles on screen when I use right mouse button. but how can I export my screen with metatiles? I want to use metatiles instead of tiles to free some space.

[FrankenGraphics]

NEXXT 3.4 released
https://frankengraphics.itch.io/nexxt



Summary:
First, a ratification - the attached release notes in the zip had a few mistakes:
-"Swirl move" on metasprites is [Ctrl+Alt+Right mouse drag]
-"Mirror move" on metasprites is [Ctrl+Shift+Right mouse drag]

New features and improvements
- Crop canvas [Alt+C,C]
- Alignment controls added to Set Canvas Size [Ctrl+Alt+N]
- Cut (ctrl+x) on Canvas now also cuts attribute data, so long as the whole attribute cell is within the selection
- Navigator [F6] now renders 400% faster when zoomed out
- Colour Perception Testing Filters [Ctrl+Shift+F2] is a new tool that lets you spot potential contrast- or distraction issues for different types of colour perception. It's not an accurate simulation of said vision types, but can assist in giving you a clue what to watch out for.
-Metasprite canvases on the Metasprite Tab [F2] and Metasprite Manager/Animator has increased size from 128 to 144 NES pixels.
This makes them a bit more ergonomic to work with, and especially helps a bit when zooming in on the Animator.
-GUI elements for the Metasprite Tab and Metasprite Manager/Animator have been subtly rearranged for better usage of the given screen space.
-You can now multi-select sprites directly on the Metasprite canvas, without having to resort to selecting from the list.
-You can also multi-move sprites
-In addition, there are two special multi-moves: mirror-move, which moves sprites together or apart in a mirrored fashion, and swirl move, which moves sprites together or apart in a swirly fashion. Both are handy for FX animations.
-A new context menu button on the Metasprite tab lets you toggle axis of the "mirror move". More features are planned to be added to this context menu in the future.
-The "constant playback rate" mode for the Animator now has a context menu to help fine tune the rate.
This is useful for when wanting to analyze an animation free from the context of intended durations.

Bugfixes:
-Broken metasprite as image export fixed
-Save session didn't store loop tags (and other tags) correctly. fixed.
-Scrolling the metasprite list in the Manager/Animator also affected zoom level. Fixed.
- Loading a new session didn't flush out old metasprite labels. Fixed.
-"Insert new metasprite" had no handling for certain metadata like tags. Fixed.

[FrankenGraphics]

This update straddles the line between minor and major, but since all improvements are more or less tied into old features, I decided it was minor.

Still, there's 1 particularly important bugfix i recommend anyone using 3.x, or possibly earlier, to update to this version.
At some point, the "save latest size" command for CHR exports broke, and has now been fixed.


====
3.4.1
====

Improvements to existing features
------------------------------------------
Sateen strip scales with UI:
The 'sateen strip' that lets you pattern-paint with NES NTSC safe 3-step sateen dither patterns, now scales to 1.5 of a tile per pattern when UI scale is 3x or above.
Instead of zooming and causing blur, the repeat shows an overshoot of 4 NES pixels in each dimension.
The behaviour is exactly the same as before; only the UI has been enlarged for viewing, hovering and clicking purposes.

'Null Tile' setting stored in .nss session:
The 'null tile', that is, the tile that NEXXT repaints with when deleting or cutting nametable content, and which is used in certain analytical calculations under the hood, is now stored in the .nss session file.

This makes it considerably more convenient to work with materials where you want the null tile to be anything other than ID $00.

'Set Null Tile' alternate method:
Right clicking the "null tile" recess below the tileset will enter an alternate 'set null tile' mode. Clicking the tileset after will set the null tile to that tile, and exit the mode.
You may also click a tilespace on the map/nametable canvas while in this mode, which can be handy.
Clicking on the null tile recess again will abort this mode without setting a new null tile.
This is an alternate method to the two preexisting ways, which are:

-Double clicking sets the null tile to the currently selected top left tile in the tileset.
-Click, hold, and drag up/down will scroll through the tiles to select the null tile.

Expanded selection box, Metasprites Tab [F2]:
The 'view boxes' group now has a "+1" toggle button, which expands the visual representation of the selected sprite 1 pixel outside the sprite boundaries. This can help get a clearer view of the sprite you're editing (especially handing when drawing pixels and viewing the metasprite for reference), but has the drawback of being harder to position accurately.
It is turned off by default.

Map and Metasprite Tabs [F1 resp. F2] remembers tile and palette buttons:
When switching between the map and the metasprite tab, each tab remembers the tileset and palette set buttons it used last.
This makes it more convenient to work on small projects (NROM or CNROM games, for example) contained in a single session file.
For larger projects, it's still generally recommended to keep one set of assets per session file rather than trying to collect them in just one. But if the project is easily managed enough, this should help.

NESlib RLE Export:
Warning messagebox pops up when an RLE encoded file is backwards incompatible with Shiru's original version of NESlib RLE. This happens whenever an asset is using all 256 tiles, which was a bug / out of spec that the original decoder couldn't parse correctly.
A drop-in replacement has long been in the 'NES programming resources' folder, but now it's more evident when you may need to use it.
The warning message has a "don't remind me" checkbox.


Bugfixes:
-----------

Save Latest CHR:
Wholly broken, would lay down tiles unreliably. Fixed.
Thanks to Mazionach for reporting.

CHR Editor, Brush toolbox, Bank Selector:
Pressing or holding keys with these forms active could make NEXXT run redundant UI updates. Fixed.

Canvas> Set empty spaces to subpalette [Alt+E]:
Got broken in some previous version, and flagged most spaces as positive by mistake. Fixed.

RLE compression:
Didn't catch if the last byte (usually an attribute) of the stream represented a different/new run. Fixed.
Thanks to nesrocks for reporting and working this through with me.

Load .mrle:
Attributes had a rounding-down error that made it skip populating half-attributes. Fixed.