This tool set is simple, intuitive, and useful--it does what it says it does, and I don't often find myself wondering what a given tool does. On the rare occasion I have questions, clicking the tool and seeing what happens usually answers it.
I'm not seeing a few functions I'd like to that the original had: color, as others have said, and if there's an option to change the canvas size to 8 X 16, 16 X 16 or 32 X 32 to work on sprites, I can't find it anywhere
Prospective buyers should also note that (unless I'm missing something) there is no built in save function. To save your work, you must click "copy to clipboard," paste the code in a document, and save the document. Again, fairly intuitive, but something to know going in
Unfortunately, some of the tools that are included don't seem to work? For example, when I click the undo button or use the ctrl + z hotkey, nothing seems to happen. Not the biggest problem when working with an 8 x 8 grid, but a bit odd.
To be clear! I find the dev's stance about color functionality ("it's open source, feel free to design your own color functionality") perfectly reasonable. I'm not going to demand that much extra work for software I paid two dollars for! I'm just listing my thoughts as someone who fiddled briefly with the software
Thank you for the thorough review! I have to admit I haven’t used this in a while, so I’ll have to boot it up and try to fix the undo functionality as that is definitely a must have feature.
And if I’m revisiting it for an update, a new feature would be a nice addition. I have had some interest in GBC games, and with the number of people mentioning a desire for colors it’s certainly near the top of my list. Problem is I’d have to learn how the color maps work in GBDK haha.
EDIT: Speaking of it being a while, I forgot that there doesn’t seem to be an undo button? Is that in a menubar somewhere on Windows? I build this on a Mac (hence why I don’t just use Gameboy Tile Designer) so I likely just didn’t realize that Windows shows an undo button, which is why it isn’t actually hooked up.
That would explain it. On Windows, there's an "edit" menu on the top with buttons that say undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, delete, and select all. None of them do anything as far as I can tell, unless they have some effect on the text? If the Windows compiler just expected to find them and slotted them in automatically, that would explain why they wouldn't be hooked up to anything lol
The code is open source so if you have interest it would be somewhat straight forward to make the UI show different colors, although there is no output format for anything other than GBDK at the moment.
I haven’t used GB Studio very much, but I don’t think it has a way to import the hexadecimal format that this outputs.
I could theoretically implement a way to export to JPEG, but if you want a JPEG it’s probably easier to use just about any other fully featured image editing tool.
I could see some use for backgrounds, but Tiled works well and is still maintained.
This is really just intended to support GBDK because the only tool recommended for generating the kind of byte code you need for GBDK sprites hasn’t been updated for literal decades.
That being said, the code for this is open source and if someone implemented a way to export the sprite sheet in a format that works with GB Studio, I would definitely merge it in.
The best tools for making pixel art PNGs like you would use with GB Studio are currently Aseprite on Windows and Linux, Pixquare on IOS, and Pixel Studio on mobile. This tool is for when you need to export your pixel art to .c specifically for use with GBDK (although I wouldn't be surprised if there are other graphical development kits it would be good for.)
Aseprite and Pixquare are paid software, but Aseprite you buy once and own not only the software but any updates they publish for life. Pixquare I believe is similar, but I haven't touched an Apple device in nearly ten years so I can't say for certain.
Pixel Studio is free with a paid option for ad free and premium features (including making pictures above a certain canvas size.)
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This tool set is simple, intuitive, and useful--it does what it says it does, and I don't often find myself wondering what a given tool does. On the rare occasion I have questions, clicking the tool and seeing what happens usually answers it.
I'm not seeing a few functions I'd like to that the original had: color, as others have said, and if there's an option to change the canvas size to 8 X 16, 16 X 16 or 32 X 32 to work on sprites, I can't find it anywhere
Prospective buyers should also note that (unless I'm missing something) there is no built in save function. To save your work, you must click "copy to clipboard," paste the code in a document, and save the document. Again, fairly intuitive, but something to know going in
Unfortunately, some of the tools that are included don't seem to work? For example, when I click the undo button or use the ctrl + z hotkey, nothing seems to happen. Not the biggest problem when working with an 8 x 8 grid, but a bit odd.
To be clear! I find the dev's stance about color functionality ("it's open source, feel free to design your own color functionality") perfectly reasonable. I'm not going to demand that much extra work for software I paid two dollars for! I'm just listing my thoughts as someone who fiddled briefly with the software
Thank you for the thorough review! I have to admit I haven’t used this in a while, so I’ll have to boot it up and try to fix the undo functionality as that is definitely a must have feature.
And if I’m revisiting it for an update, a new feature would be a nice addition. I have had some interest in GBC games, and with the number of people mentioning a desire for colors it’s certainly near the top of my list. Problem is I’d have to learn how the color maps work in GBDK haha.
EDIT: Speaking of it being a while, I forgot that there doesn’t seem to be an undo button? Is that in a menubar somewhere on Windows? I build this on a Mac (hence why I don’t just use Gameboy Tile Designer) so I likely just didn’t realize that Windows shows an undo button, which is why it isn’t actually hooked up.
That would explain it. On Windows, there's an "edit" menu on the top with buttons that say undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, delete, and select all. None of them do anything as far as I can tell, unless they have some effect on the text? If the Windows compiler just expected to find them and slotted them in automatically, that would explain why they wouldn't be hooked up to anything lol
I was wondering if this supports the Gameboy Color pallette
Hey! No, this doesn’t have any Gameboy Color pallettes included currently.
Ok thank you
It would be nice to create our own colorpalettes
The code is open source so if you have interest it would be somewhat straight forward to make the UI show different colors, although there is no output format for anything other than GBDK at the moment.
Would this by any chance work well with GB Studio?
I haven’t used GB Studio very much, but I don’t think it has a way to import the hexadecimal format that this outputs.
I could theoretically implement a way to export to JPEG, but if you want a JPEG it’s probably easier to use just about any other fully featured image editing tool.
I could see some use for backgrounds, but Tiled works well and is still maintained.
This is really just intended to support GBDK because the only tool recommended for generating the kind of byte code you need for GBDK sprites hasn’t been updated for literal decades.
That being said, the code for this is open source and if someone implemented a way to export the sprite sheet in a format that works with GB Studio, I would definitely merge it in.
The best tools for making pixel art PNGs like you would use with GB Studio are currently Aseprite on Windows and Linux, Pixquare on IOS, and Pixel Studio on mobile. This tool is for when you need to export your pixel art to .c specifically for use with GBDK (although I wouldn't be surprised if there are other graphical development kits it would be good for.)
Aseprite and Pixquare are paid software, but Aseprite you buy once and own not only the software but any updates they publish for life. Pixquare I believe is similar, but I haven't touched an Apple device in nearly ten years so I can't say for certain.
Pixel Studio is free with a paid option for ad free and premium features (including making pictures above a certain canvas size.)
I find Piskel works best for me. It's a free web tool, and I've used it for pretty much everything in my game.
... you know it makes sense that you'd already have found something that works for you in the two years since asking the question lol