I wanted to start this week with a small reminder to please star thePixel Vision 8 open-source project on GitHub. We are at 365 stars, and I am really pushing hard to get it past 500 this month.
As for this week's update, I'm happy to share I completed the Drawing Tool. All that is left are some minor bug fixes and polishing.
Now when you double-click on the colors.png or sprite.png files, the new tool will open up in the corresponding edit mode. You can easily switch between the two modes at any time. For the most part, the new Draw Tool works like the old Color and Sprite Tools, with the following exceptions:
The editor will now force you to work in palette mode.
You'll have 128 unique system colors and eight palettes with a maximum of 16 colors per palette.
I am working on some logic to process the sprites when they load up to make sure each one is correctly mapped to the palettes. This is more for those working outside of PV8 or need to migrate previous projects.
You'll now be able to preview the color offset directly in the editor. By default, each palette page will set it for you but you can also drag a system color or palette color over to the sprite picker to change it manually. This is an advanced feature so I'll be sure to document how to use it.
I also started working my way through the backlog of requested features and implemented custom game icons for your project.
Just add a 24 x 48-pixel icon.png file to your game project with two 24 x 24-pixel icons for the up and selected state.
I'll be adding support for editing this inside of PV8 in a future release. Still, I wanted to set the groundwork for other customizations like supplying your flag icons for the tilemap editor.
Finally, I have been doing a lot of writing on Medium lately. I started a Pixel Vision 8 publication where I've been posting about broader retro-inspired content. I may bring some of it over here. Honestly, I haven't been sure what to do with these posts outside of weekly updates so if you'd like to read the Medium content, be sure to follow the publication and myself.
I am on vacation this entire week. My plan is to work my way through all of the outstanding bugs in the v0.9.8 build. I think I can put a serious dent in the workload and hoping I have some good news for you all next week on when I'll push the build live.