For the past few months I’ve been hard at work on DAME 3. Admittedly, version 3 was never meant to happen, but then I tried to make a game for Ludum Dare and discovered a whole lot of things that needed work. In the end I decided to make DAME the way I always wanted to make it, with every feature I had originally planned but abandonned for one reason or another and a vast array of usability improvements.

It will be released very soon. All that’s remaining to do are updated sample projects and a bit more testing.

Here is the full list of features that you’ll find once it’s released:

1. Drawing:
1. - Can now draw shapes (lines,polygons,circles and boxes).
2. - New mode that will create new tiles as you draw.
3. - Sprite drawing improved, also with full select,move,copy,paste functions.
4. - Hold Spacebar to use eyedropper in draw mode.
5. - Revamped drawing toolbar.
6. - Can now flip selections in draw mode.
7. - Flood Fill in drawing mode can now use a tolerance value.
8. - Fixed Locked Tile Mode (when drawing on tiles).
9. - Can now insert/remove tiles(frames) from sprites in Draw Mode.
10. - Can insert new tiles under a selction.
2. Sprites:
1. - Added anims for anim sprites, editable on sprite info.
2. - Added shapes for anim sprites, allowing you to define custom named points, circles and boxes per frames.
3. - Added anim editor for anim sprites, accessible from the film strip icon in Draw Mode.
3. Paths:
1. - Added path events.
2. - Improved visibility of nodes on paths.
4. Exporters:
1. - Updated flixel complex exporter to export SpriteInfo containing anim and shape data for all sprites.
2. - New parameter added for tile anims, which exports as %looped%
3. - Can add custom separators to various loops in exporters.
4. - Flixel complex exporter can now export sprite anims and sprite anim shapes.
5. - Added public (non static) boundsMin and boundsMax for each exported level in flixelComplex.
6. - Flixel Complex now automatically includes list of classes in BaseLevel for ClassReference dynamic spawning trick.
7. - Fixed bug with the %%if prop:%% not working.
8. - Added new xml data exporter.
9. - Can now use project specific exporters by placing lua files in your .dam project directory and using Menu:File->Project Export
10. - Can specify file paths relative to the current project.
5. Tiles:
1. - Option to add only visible tiles to a tile matrix, allowing easier re-adding of already placed tiles.
2. - Improvements to the way tiles are rendered in lists.
3. - Option to make tile palette automatically scale tiles to fit width/height of pane.
4. - Ability to turn off the checkered pattern on the tile palette.
6. Misc:
1. - Can save the project to an image.
2. - Can now zoom out to 12% normal magnification.
3. - Added customisable property types.
4. - Tile matrices are now bound more tightly to tilesets.
5. - Fixed issues when removing tiles from a tilemap.
6. - Fix bugs with onion skin not being enforced.
7. - Right click menu option on layers or groups in the layers tree view to move them to the current location of the cursor.
8. - Moving groups with snap to grid enabled will now move them in steps of the tilemap size.
9. - Improved readability of tile lists in popup windows.
10. - Improved visibility of tilemap and selection borders when zoomed out.
11. - You can now specify properties on any layer type.
12. - Tile properties are now highlighted in the tilelist for easy navigation.
13. - Double click on entries in Layers and Sprites trees to edit their properties.
14. - Right click menu option to edit sprite entries within sprite editor.
15. - Added warning when starting a new file or loading a file from the desktop when there are unsaved changes in the current file.
16. - Fixed for graphical corruption at edge of screen with very large windows.
17. - Fixed incorrectly sized panels when starting DAME maximized.
18. - Game region overlay can now be centered on the screen.
19. - Extra gridlines sized based on the game region overlay size (overlay doesn’t need to be active).

Only a tiny bit of news here…

I’ve revamped the page for DAME slightly, with some funky slideshow thingy. Over time I’ll continue to make small changes here and there and cut out the clutter.

dambots.com/dame-editor/

DAME version 2 is finally out!

It’s gone through beta testing but keep backups just in case.

New features are:

• Certain windows (tile palette, sprites, layers and properties windows) are now dockable.
• Isometric tilemap support – support for diamond, staggered diamond and skewed. Tile matrix and brushes all still work as expected with these layer types.
• Tilemaps can have height.
• Tiles can be stacked on top of each other.
• Improved visuals for selected tiles.
• Improvements to drawing on tilemaps.
• Can draw lines on tilemaps.
• Flood fill for tilemaps.
• Can select, move and scale regions in tile drawing mode.
• Can copy and paste in tile drawing mode.
• Eraser when drawing on tilemap images is now a separate mode.
• Right click when drawing brings up context menu.
• New configurable 16 colour palette for drawing.
• Tiles can be animated.
• Can have per tile properties.
• Can repeat tilemaps on individual axes.
• Can use any system font for text boxes.
• Can use bitmap fonts for text boxes.
• Increased undo history.
• New Sprite Trails – automatically populate a path with a series of sprites.
• Sprites can be automatically sorted for depth.
• Sprites can use a Z value for height placement.
• All object layers can be aligned with an isometric tilemap layer to allow exported positions to be relative to the tilemap’s ‘real’ coordinate system.
• Aligned shapes on shape layers will rotate/skew to fit the tilemap shapes.
• Can change the frame for any sprite to be different from the sprite entry.
• Tile sprites are now spritesheets – can scale and translate the image within.
• Can rip an image to create a tilemap layer and tileset.
• Choice of themes for DAME.
• Importing dam projects with sprites improved to find pre-existing matches in current project.
• Can save sprite entry lists separate to a .dam project as a .dsf (DAME Sprite File), allowing you to have multiple sharing one list of sprites.
• Can move an entire group in real-time.
• More of the session is saved in a .dam file allowing you to resume editing where you left off much easier.
• Tiles now preview in tilemap layer properties window.
• Can gives shapes different colours.

As a safety measure after the update, version 1.3.1 is still available from this link:

dambots.com/games/dame/DAME_1_3_1.air

With any luck this will be the last ever update for version 1 of DAME.

All of the great things that have been happening recently with flixel updated to version 2.5 beta had left the sample exporters with a few incompatibility issues, so now you can choose which version of flixel to export against.

While version 2.5 still has some minor bugs I urge you to try it as you’ll find a few really good tweaks that improve the functionality significantly – the new FlxCamera is really useful!

As for DAME itself, I am now in the process of writing all of the exporter hooks for the new functionality and then I should be ready for beta testing at the end of this month before full scale (and still 100% free) release. If you’re interested in testing it get in touch by email or on twitter. To see some of the new features check out my twitter – the list is still being updated!

twitter.com/charlesgoatley

A minor update for DAME has been released with some fixes to resolve various reported loading and saving issues.

I’ve been hard at work over the last few months creating version 2 of DAME. There are a lot of new features packed into it, some small, some big, and hopefully something for everyone.

If you’re interested in discovering what DAME 2.0 will include then head on over to my twitter page where I’m telling the world about every little feature:

twitter.com/charlesgoatley

There is a new version of DAME out with some small tweaks:

• Flood Fill and Magic Wand selection is now optimised.
• Grid settings now saved with project.
• Default map size for new tilemaps is now 10 * 10 instead of 1 * 1.

Also, I’m still hard at work on version 2 and making a lot of progress and I’ll give you all some more info on it very soon…

A new version of DAME has been released with some useful functionality to encourage portability of files, as well as some minor tweaks.

The first things are the addition of 2 exporter functions: DAME.GetProjectFile() and DAME.GetProjectFileLocation(). With these you can do some extra manipulation to make output filenames relative to the project file if you wish.

A few versions ago I made a change which saved the exporter settings in each project file. Now you can control whether DAME does this or not by unticking an option at the bottom of the exporter popup window. This means that people with multiple project files will be able to make it easy to share settings, and people who use their projects on many machines will be able to share the files and not have to change anything like path names.

Well done for FreakyZoid (aka Anthony Gowland) for making a new Flash game using DAME as the map editor.

The game is called Tealy & Orangey and is a challenging puzzle game where you control 2 different coloured balls simultaneously in split screen levels. It gets really interesting when you reach later levels where the balls can cross into each other’s zones completely safe from the hazards that would kill their other counterpart.

Aside from the interesting gameplay, it’s got a nice look to it and has a funny sarcastic sense of humour.

Give the game a go at Kongregate, and then if you feel like making something then try DAME for yourself!

As far as I know this is the second game made using DAME, so if you want me to mention yours then let me know about it.

Just a small hotfix to stop .dam and settings xml files from becoming very huge.

If you’ve noticed any slowdown when loading/saving/closing since the last version, saving your .dam file with this new version will fix that.