LBA Brick Layout Library Editor

[Battler]

LBA Brick Layout Library Editor version 0.01 Beta
=================================================

Current features:
- Both LBA 1 and LBA 2 brick layout libraries;
- Copying/removing items and changing item positions (in library); copying means from Library 1 (read-only) to Library 2 (library to edit);
- A legend;
- 2 different item classification methods for LBA 2.

Things to do:
- Saving the settings into an .INI file;
- Operations with .HQR files;
- Editing sound/floor type of a block of a layout (Library 2).


How this program works
----------------------
You have to load two libraries. Library 1 is the source library, which is the one you take the items from, and you will probably load various libraries as source library during the modification of a BLL. Library 2 is the library, that you're editing, thus all operations modify this library.

The operations are:
- Add: copies the selected layout from Library 1 to the position of the selected layout in Library 2;
- Remove: removes the selected layout from Library 2;
- Move up: moves the selected layout up in Library 2;
- Move down: moves the selected layout down in Library 2.

If you want to better understand, what icon means what type of item, choose "Show Legend" under "Options". When you're finish editing, save the library.


Credits
-------
Me (OBrasilo): for starting the program and general coding.
George (kargeor): for huge coding help.
Kazimierz Król (Zink): compression and decompression routines, and documenting the BLL file format as well.


Links
-----
The program: http://www.obrasilero.com/BLLEdit.zip.
The source code: http://www.obrasilero.com/BLLEdit-source.zip.


I hope you'll find the program useful.

- ChaosFish: Please add this program to the Quick Start sticky thread.

[ChaosFish]

Well done Obras!
This is a very useful tool. Thanks!

Found a tiny little bug: When you File -> Open and then click Cancel, the program crashed.

But overally it's great!

[Battler]

- ChaosFish: Thanks.

Yeah, later I found that same bug myself. I'll release a new version later today.

[xesf]

Great work indeed. It still yet dificult to change libraries and the program sometimes crashes but its a nice thing to start and I know it will be improved later.

[Zink]

Good work.

But instead of putting this "classify" thing (which is useless IMHO), you could put these little images for sounds and for floor types (different of course), just for information.

I can give you my code I wrote to arange layouts on the screen, so that very little of free space is visible (screenshot attached). You could use it to display layouts from both libraries so we could drag & drop them (there could be a problem with indexing, because layouts are not arranged in the order they are in libraries). Or just display a list with layouts resized to the same sizes (about 40x30, or some).

Anyway, bug report:
- When I open a library from LBA 2, the "classify by floor number (LBA 2 only)" is still inactive.
- When I open a first library from LBA 2, and a second from LBA 1, the program doesn't ask me if it is from LBA 1 or 2, so when I then open first library from LBA 1, the program thinks, that both libs are from LBA 2 and they are in fact form LBA 1.
- "walking over water" sound for LBA 1 (I wrote in specification that it sounded like walking over water) is in fact sound of a sailing boat.

With the sound and floor naming, wait until I release updated version of *.bll files specification.
And I am going to split the *.bll extension into *.bl1 and *.bl2, for LBA 1 and 2, because they have identical formats, but some parts of data have different meaning and there is no way to distinguish one from another.

EDIT: forgot to attach the screenshot

[Battler]

OK, here's a screenshot of the program in its current state. I successfully made it display the layouts, now I only have to make this thing a list box.

The screenshot (also attached):

[xesf]

Nice improvement

[Battler]

I just wanted to say that I already started the process of converting this program from Visual Basic to Delphi, which will increase its spead and add more possibilities for various stuff to be added to it.

Special thanks go to Zink for helping me greatly with the conversion process since he explained (and will explain me more) many things.

So as soon as the program is converted to Delphi and the layouts display etc. finished, I'll release version 1.0.0 final.