ClownMapEd - The Open Source SonMapEd Clone

[Clownacy]

SonMapEd is pretty old, having last been updated in 2007, but for the last decade it has served as my go-to sprite editor and converter. Unfortunately, there are a few places where it shows its age, such as its inefficient data compression, blurriness on high-DPI displays, and shoddy DPLC generation. Due to SonMapEd being closed-source software, it is not possible to address these issues without complex low-level reverse engineering of the EXE. Additionally, being nothing more than a closed-source EXE, SonMapEd lacks native support for other operating systems (such as Linux) and CPU architectures (such as ARM).

I hope to bring an end to these problems and more with the release of my open source, portable SonMapEd clone - ClownMapEd!

Features:

• Written in modern C++!
• Support for Windows, Linux, and presumably many other desktop operating systems, owing to the portability of the Qt framework!
• Support for high-DPI displays, eliminating the blurriness that plagues SonMapEd!
• Vastly-improved DPLC generation, producing data that is even more efficient than that in the original games, and far more efficient than that of SonMapEd!
• Improved data compression, by leveraging Flamewing's 'mdcomp' compression library!
• Support for the Kosinski+ and Comper compression formats!
• Improved colour-matching for sprite importing, leveraging the Delta-E 2000 colour difference algorithm!
• Additional keyboard shortcuts that benefit users of alternate keyboard layouts!
• An accurate clone of SonMapEd, meaning that anyone who is familiar with it will be right at home with ClownMapEd!
• Not based on the bloated Electron framework, unlike a certain other sprite editor!

Screenshot:

Spoiler

Source Code: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmaped
Windows Executable: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmaped/releases

 

[Clownacy]

Here is v1.0.1. It is a small update that adds two things:

• More file extensions, such as '.nem' and '.kos'.
• More keyboard shortcuts, which provide alternatives to the ';', ''', '[', and ']' keys. These new shortcuts use the '6', '7', '8', and '9' keys, respectively.

 

[Clownacy]

Here is v1.1. It fixes a couple of bugs and adds support for MainMemory's MapMacros, which the Git disassemblies of Sonic 1 and 2 now use.

 

[Clownacy]

Here is v1.1.1.

Changes:

• Saving tiles/palettes/mappings/DPLCs no longer requires permission to overwrite existing files.
• Non-MapMacro mappings/DPLCs no longer use local labels, to improve compatibility with old disassemblies.
• Tiles can now be saved in assembly format.

 

[Clownacy]

v1.2
https://github.com/Clownacy/ClownMapEd/releases/tag/v1.2
Changes

• Settings and sprite data are no longer lost when the program is closed.
• Up to 9 'save states' can be made, allowing work to be saved and resumed later.
• Tiles can be oriented vertically.
• Assembler error output is shown when assembly data fails to be loaded.

I had made this update back in July, but got so carried-away with my job that I completely forgot about it!

 

[Clownacy]

v1.2.0.1
https://github.com/Clownacy/ClownMapEd/releases/tag/v1.2.0.1

Selbi pointed out to me that v1.2 fails to load compressed data, so here's a hot-fix.