This is a bit of a catch-up as I write about what happened in the past two weeks. Apart from Tiled Monday I’ve been exceptionally busy with my daughter getting her own room, which has meant days of packing, painting, moving furniture and relocating my PC twice. I’m still waiting on the delivery of some curtains to separate my desk from the rest of the bedroom, so that I can be more active in the evenings again. Indeed, I had to give up my office room.
Anyway, October was spent on adding long-missing features, most importantly the ability to load maps with broken links and the ability to change any file references from within Tiled. Also, it is now possible to change tileset parameters after the tileset has been added. All this closed most of the cases remaining in Tiled that would otherwise have required the user to edit the map file in a text editor, which is important for the 1.0 milestone.
Week 45
I started November finishing this work and making it ready for a merge into the master branch. There were a few missing pieces that I had listed in my last update.
So in the morning, I made it so that maps referencing external tilesets which can’t be found will open with a placeholder tileset, after which the reference can be updated in the Properties view (a97d42).
I spent the rest of the day to finish the interface that I had been working on earlier, which will pop up when opening a map with any broken links (dfa044). In this case, Tiled will now show the list of broken links at the top along with the option to ignore the problems or to locate any of the files somewhere else.
Week 46
Since the above interface will be visible alongside all the usual widgets, I had to make it update as links are being fixed by any means (91f1af).
Next, I worked on the issue of adjusting maps to an increase of decrease in the tileset image width. Previously, when Tiled opened a map that referenced a tileset image of which the width had changed, it would silently update the tile references, assuming that the additional width was added to make room for more tiles. This logic was sometimes unwanted and it was broken for external tilesets. And it had to be disabled now that the loading of images is delayed until later.
Now, Tiled will ask the user whether he wants to update the tile references, and this operation can be undone if needed (2ce340). Also, Tiled will ask the user for this type of adjustment when it notices the tileset width has changed when reloading a tileset image (d9f083). Previously this case was not handled at all.
With only the display issue remaining for image collection tilesets, I decided it was time to merge wip/broken-links to master. I’ll be working on improving the display of image collection tilesets upcoming Monday. In the meantime, please try a daily build, edit some of your references, break some links, and please report if you notice any strange behavior!
Looking Ahead
I think the next most important issue to work on is to allow editing of external tilesets, but this is at the same time the most tricky issue remaining on the Tiled 1.0 milestone.
At the start of December, I’ll decide whether to go for a 1.0 release this year or to release a Tiled 0.15 first.
Finally, many thanks to all my patrons and those who’ve donated! Without your support I would not have the time to do this work!
