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CharPad 2.8 User Manual - Subchrist Software, 2021.

Compression and Decompression.

Compression...

The compression function can be used to remove unnecessary duplication and/or unused items from a project, several options are offered when 'Compress' is clicked...

• Remove duplicate characters.
• Remove duplicate tiles. *
• Remove unused characters.
• Remove unused tiles. *

(*) Tile compression options will only be available if the project uses tiles.

Also included is an option to sort the characters in the set by their material values (in ascending order), this option is provided mainly to support the 'Shoot 'em Up Construction Kit' as it uses a character's position in the set to decide it's collision effect on the player rather than consulting a look-up table of character material values.

Decompression...

The decompression function is only available to projects that use tiles.

CharPad contains features that allow tiles to be drawn and transformed as if they were bitmap images, they are not, tiles only contain references to character images.

When 'Decompress' is clicked, the character set will expand to a size that exactly matches the number of cells (character image references) in the entire tile set and all of the character images that are referenced by tile cells will be duplicated (as needed) across the character set.

At the same time, the tile set data is re-written so that each cell of each tile references a unique character image.

In this special state, it becomes possible to edit all of the character images used by any tile from a single canvas (the tile editor) as if the tile were a single bitmap image.

Without this feature it would only be possible to make tiles by assigning particular character images to tile cells (ie. using the 'Char Brush' tool).

CharPad will always ask permission to decompress the project when an operation requires it.