5 replies to this topic

[colinvella]

Tile IDE (tIDE) and XTile are an integrated solution for building tile-based games using Microsoft XNA technology.

tIDE is a fully-featured, .NET-based tile editor that allows level designers to easily create content for tile-based games. tIDE supports a custom XM:-based map format, however, support for additional formats may be included via the .NET-based plugin system.



Features

• Intuitive user interface
  
• Support for multiple tile layers to facilitate the design of games featuring parallax scrolling
  
• Animated tiles
  
• Full-featured drawing toolbox to facilitate level design
  
• Layer ordering and visibility
  
• Support for an extensive range of display sizes to facilitate alignment when desigining multi-layer maps
  
• Support for arbitrary tile sizes and multiple tile sheets
  
• Brushes to facilitate reuse of common composite elements
  
• Multiple file formats
  
• Full undo/redo capabilites
  
• Support for custom properties at every level of the map structure
  
• Full-screen editing mode
  
• Zooming capabilities
  
• Map structure navigation and manipulation via the Map Explorer panel
  
• Intuitive tile picker
  
• Auto-scrolling capabilities
  
• Dockable editor compoonents
  
• Tile sheet auto-update feature to streamline content creation pipeline
  
• Painless tile sheet rearragement
  
• Tile guides and layer viewing options
  
• Statistics on dimensions and tile usage
  
• Estensive potential for customisation via a plugin management system
  
• Built-in help system

The project is open-source software, available on CodePlex:
http://tide.codeplex.com/

[TheNut]

I was unable to install the program. Immediately launching the installer I got an error "This installation package could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package". I am also unable to compile your source since your project uses features not available in my IDE (Express edition).

[colinvella]

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. Runtime prerequisites for the application are:

.NET Framework 3.5
XNA Framework 3.1

I have tested this on Vista and Windows 7, and both of these have dev environments. I will look into it and try to improve the installer.

What Windows OS have you tried this on?

Regards,
Colin

[TheNut]

I'm using Windows 7 64 bit /w .NET 4.0 support. I don't have XNA installed. Normally software just bundles the necessary runtimes with the package though.

[colinvella]

I've tested the executable setup file further and found out that it works only sporadically. When it fails, it displays the same error message you reported. The executable setup is really a self extracting zip containing a Windows MSI install file and an executable Setup.exe stub that was executed to process the MSI file. For some reason, the self extracting wrapper does not work as it should, hence the problem.

I have now replaced this file with the MSI file directly (tIDESetup100.msi). I have also ensured that it is configured to check for prerequisites :

• .NET 3.5
  
• XNA 3.1 Redist
  
• Windows Installer

If any of the above are missing, it should prompt you to download them from Microsoft Update.

[colinvella]

Version 1.0.1 addresses some important fixes, and introduces support for the Tiled TMX map format (all data encodings supported - XVL, Base64/Plain/GZIP/ZLIB, CSV)