Tuckpointer

Update Sept 7th 2009: Tuckpointer is at 98%, but still quite usable.

Tuckpointer is a content creation tool for Brick based games.

The main components are a level editor and a pixel paint program.

NOTE: The pixel paint portion of Tuckpointer is generally referred to as the Sprite Editor, but it is important to note that tiles and sprites are not synonymous in the Brick engine. The Sprite Editor in Tuckpointer can be used to generate both.

The Sprite Editor in Tuckpointer is designed to be a very fast pixel paint program. Technically, it can be used to create pixel artwork for any purpose (and you are certainly free to use it that way). Though still in early development stages (as of April 19th, 2009), it is already a very powerful tool capable of most features of comparable pixel paint programs.

Features of Tuckpointer's Sprite Editor

* Basic pixel painting (of course!).

* Eyedropper.

* Per-pixel color replacement.

* Flood fill.

* Tile mode, for creating seamless tiles.

* Layers, layer merge, flattening for Brick.

* Simple animation, and a frame sequencer for more complex animations.

* Onion skin for animation.

* Exporting to Animated GIFs.

* Exporting to PNG.

* Unlimited undo.

* Selections, cut, copy, paste.

* Flip, rotate.

* Layer nudge.

* Keyboard mappings for all of the above.

An especially notable feature of the sprite editor is its unique gradient based palette system.

Pairs of colors are chosen and gradients with fixed numbers of steps (i.e. 16 or 32) are displayed. In this way small virtually fixed blended palettes can be generated. I believe this to be a better option than creating standard fixed palettes or simply throwing a limitless 24-bit color picker in front of an artist. However, if limitations aren't desired, the system can of course still be used to choose any 24-bit color.

The Map Editor is basically a tile/sprite painter. It supports multiple layers which can each have their own tile size.

.bmz files are map files. .bsz files contain graphics.

Both formats are simply zip files containing a JSON description of the contents and either .bsz files in the case of .bmz files, or images in the case of .bsz files.

.bsz files contain copies of both flattened frames and the individual layers.

Flattened images in .bsz files are automatically color-keyed to (255,0,255), as Brick does not support per-pixel alpha.