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CharPad 2.8 User Manual - Subchrist Software, 2021.

The Tile Editor Form.

The Tile Editor form allows you to edit the currently selected tile.

Painting...

It is important to note that there are two distinct ways to paint tiles, the first way is to use the 'Char Brush' tool to manually assign character images to the tile's cells, before CharPad existed, this was the only way that tiles could be constructed, it was slow and extremely frustrating.

The second way, only made possible by CharPad, is to draw the tile as if it were a single image having it's own set of pixels...

nb. For this method to work, it is vital that the project data be 'decompressed', doing so assigns a unique character image to each cell of each tile and effectively turns the tile editor into an array of inter-connected character image editors.

With one of the pen tools selected, pixels can be drawn using the mouse.

The LEFT mouse button draws pixels using the currently selected colour (on the Project form) and the RIGHT mouse button draws pixels using the current background colour.

With the Flood-fill tool selected, areas of the tile can be filled from any selected point, clicking the LEFT mouse button while over the drawing canvas will flood-fill using the currently selected colour and the RIGHT mouse button will flood-fill using the background colour.

The MIDDLE mouse button (if you have one) can be used to select a colour from the image when a pen or flood-fill tool is selected, or used to select a char image when the char-brush tool is selected.

Naming and Tagging...

This version of CharPad allows each tile to be assigned a name (string) and a tag value (byte).

To change the name or tag value for the current tile (or the currently selected range), simply type the new information into the text entry boxes provided in the toolbar on the main form.

nb. It is not necessary to hit ENTER in these text entry boxes but doing so will create an Undo snapshot.

Transformations...

The following transformations are available when this form is active...

• Scroll (up, down, left, right).

• Flip (left-to-right, top-to-bottom).

• Reflect (left-to-right, top-to-bottom).

• Negative.

• Colour swapping (for multi-colour tiles).

nb. Clicking a Scroll, Flip or Reflect action while holding the SHIFT key allows the selected action to be performed on the tile contents (image references) rather than the pixel data.