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vice-mapper

Welcome to a little GUI to create graphical maps out of emulator screenshots - tested with Vice. This was inspired by Overdoc's dream to have an automap feature within retro-machine emulators, such as Vice, where a player just navigates through a game and all 'new' screens are somehow mapped.

Limitations:

  • Automation was postponed until we find some clever idea to detect 'new' screens within a game.
  • Scrolling maps would be nice but require even more cleverness...

However, for games like "Blinky's Scary School" or "Cauldron II" a mapping feature can be very handy.

The map is composed ouf of individual screenshots which follow a specific naming convention: vice-screen--XXxYY.png 'XXxYY' provides the coordinates within the map.

e.g. vice-screen-50x50.png

bitmaps not following this convention are unplaced and can be placed. Once a map is saved, the filenames are renamed.

Exported maps should follow the convention to be named as the directory holding all individual tiles: .../barnsley-badger/barnsley-badger.png These files are ignored and not shot shown as unplaced to avoid cluttering up the list of unplaced tiles.

PNG file-format is preferred for now as some elements are hardcoded within the current code. When saving a map tiles (ie. screenshot) are renamed according to their coordinates otherwise are kept unmodified, so a the map finally consists of a set of properly named screenshots in one directory.

Cybernoid

Integration with Vice & Usage

Vice (current trunk) supports a one-keypress screenshot by hitting Pause. (equivalent to Alt-Shift-F12)

Usage: $ mapper [game-map directory]

Demo - Blinkey's Scary School Map

Cybernoid

Use drag&drop to move tiles around.
Use SPACE+mousemove within the map to pan around the map. Use right mouse button to show popup menu on tiles. A debug log is collected and saved at exit in file vice-mapper.log (Backup file vice-mapper.log~).

A map is stored in one directory using a standard filename convention for each placed (and even unplaced) tiles. Saving a map therefore renames tiles to code the coordinates into the file-names starting with a standard prefix vice-screen-. Even temporary filenames are created to save unplaced tiles if needed. A tiny configuration file is generated vice-screen-.vsm to store zoom and crop parameters.

Deleted tiles are moved to the trash-bin (if supported).

Build

Make sure you have the respective gtk+* and the gtkmm* development packages installed.

$ cmake .
$ make

For windows builds (msys2) make sure to set your PATH: e.g. $ export PATH=/mingw64/bin:$PATH

Limits

  • The simple map file format using standard names implies that there is only one map per directory possible.
  • Note that some conventions for the file-names exist! see above!
  • Currently the design is not optimized for speed & memory footprint
  • Maps dimension limits are hard-coded to 100x100.
  • memory limit is not handled at all and just kills the app when reached
    Especially on 32bit systems the map may only support 50x50 (used) tiles. Tiles beyond/below the current min/max coordinates aren't managed, so won't need space.
  • Handling of different tile-sizes in one map has some flaws when exporting
  • Printing always scales to one page, may lead to distortions. Use export and your favorite printing program to print .png files.

TODOs

UI-stuff

  • insert row/columns more easily
  • better support moving around tiles on map to make space in case a border is reached
  • maybe allow individual crop vals for tiles

Internals:

  • adjust maximum map dynamically depending on 32/64 bit
  • Properly manage 'gui.glade' path.
  • encapsule some globals
  • refactor code to follow consistent conventions
  • fix bugs

Know issues:

  • If trash-bin is unsupported deleted tiles remain -> will cause map inconsistencies
  • If memory limit is reached (32bit system), mapper crashes without warning.
  • Potential, maybe GTK+ related memory leaks detected with valgrind.
  • Printer dialog on Linux won't let one set page format, etc. (Ubuntu 19.10), Print Preview behaves strange (print button won't do anything from the preview popup) -> use print button directly from print dialog instead. any tips are welcome!

Copyright notice

(C) 2020 by pottendo

vice-mapper is release under the terms of GPL V3 Refer to gpl-3.0.txt.

Build vice for Windoze

This is just a brief reminder how to build Vice/Gtk+ on windoze using the msys2 packages (https://www.msys2.org/)

$ ../vice-emu-code/vice/configure -C --enable-native-tools --enable-native-gtk3ui --host=mingw32-gtk3 --enable-x64 2>&1 |tee mycfg-64.log
$ export MINGW_PREFIX=/mingw64
$ make -j12 2>&1 | tee make-32.log
$ make bindist