REXPaint

R9 is ready for download! While it doesn't contain any major new features, it was about time to cut down the to-do list, which was growing quite long from user suggestions and plenty of little things I discovered or thought of here and there (I used REXPaint pretty regularly).

So there have been a rather large number of little additions, adjustments, and bug fixes. See the changelog on the downloads page for the full list, or read on for some highlights.

You can now change the default image dimensions so that new images will default to something other than the canvas view size. So those users targeting certain systems/formats that require specific image dimensions will no longer be required to resize every image manually. This has been the most requested feature since R8 (other than support for an unlimited number of glyphs, that is, which may still happen but is pretty low priority).

Editing multiple images is now even easier: Use a hotkey (ctrl-tab) to swap back and forth between two images, increasing the window height (via config) will now extend the file browser to fill that height, and undo histories are remembered separately for each image, as are layer states (hidden/active).

The undo history now remembers every possible image editing action (it used to exclude layer manipulation and resizing). I'm not sure how heavily other users rely on layers, but I use them quite often for alternative elements and contextual notes in my GUI mockups, so while adding layer manipulation to the undo system was pretty annoying it'll definitely be worth it knowing the undo history won't be erased simply because I want to add a new layer. Now no matter what you do to an image, you can revert all the way to its initial blank state (and back again!).

Now that REXPaint features a perfect undo/redo system, auto-saving has also been implemented. This function was originally avoided since it might save changes that couldn't be undone. (If you still prefer not to auto-save, you can always disable it in the config file.)

Any devs working directly with .xp files should take note that with R9 there has been a tiny change to the .xp format. An .xp format version number is now inserted at the beginning of an image file to facilitate future updates if necessary. See Appendix B in the manual for details. This change in no way affects normal users, as REXPaint will still read old .xp files and retroactively update them automatically.

R8--yet another release, and so soon! Not nearly as substantial as the last, but essential if you like working with text.

It turns out the txt file export method used in R7 was pretty useless when dealing with extended ASCII characters, so it's been re-coded to produce unicode (UTF-8) instead.

Part of what got me looking more into text encoding was a little experiment in the form of yet another export format (seven now!): BBCode. This one's a bit unusual, but maybe someone could use it for forum games. While it may be somewhat limiting compared to simply exporting a .png and uploading that, I'm sure there are other creative uses for it out there...

BBCode output currently only supports ASCII and foreground color since there is no standardized background color tag for BBCode, though I could add a configurable background color tag option if there's demand. See the last Appendix in the manual for more about exporting to BBCode.

To use BBCode just hit Ctrl-b to export the txt file, then copy the contents of that file to your forum post. Ideally it would directly load the data into the OS clipboard, but REXPaint doesn't implement external clipboard integration at this point.

Example: An old drawing of a heavy plasma gun for X@COM as it appears in 1) REXPaint, 2) a text file (txt), and 3) a forum (BBCode!)

The to-do list for REXPaint was growing rather long after feature requests from various sources over the past few months, finally reaching critical mass and triggering a sudden desire to shorten it. A good bit of it has now been transferred over to the changelog where it's more useful to everyone ;)

With that we have R7 ready for download. Highlights below:

• Probably the biggest addition is the range of new export options beyond the already supported .png and .ans formats. Images can now be exported as pure text (.txt), as well as .csv, .xml, and .xpm.
• The text tool has been improved with buffered contents (recall and reuse/modify previously typed text), as well as newlines for quicker paragraph entry.
• The font window can be set to highlight all glyphs currently used by an image, and image-wide glyph swapping is now also possible.
• Clipboard contents can be flipped/rotated using new paste modes, useful for creating symmetrical parts of images or simply changing their orientation.

See the changelog on the downloads page for the complete list of new features.

Lately concept artist ShroomArts has been playing with REXPaint:

The Shaman

The snakeman from X-COM: UFO Defense, my personal favorite and one of his first.

I've also been honing my own ASCII skills in preparation for the art marathon we'll need for the roguelike-in-development Cogmind:

Random selection of weapon concepts. All components in Cogmind from weapons to propulsion, utilities and power sources will be drawn in ASCII, though weapons are obviously the most fun ;)

REXPaint 1.0 will be released later this year, and we might even see 2.0 if the planned Cogmind map editor is implemented as an alternate mode in REXPaint that enables roguelike developers to create ASCII-based terrain+object maps for their games. Haven't decided on that feature yet.

As usual, comment with any feature suggestions. Anything somewhat useful that can be easily added will eventually be implemented (half the improvements in the current version came from user requests, mostly via e-mail and forums), and more involved features will at least be taken into consideration.

A member of the ANSI group Blocktronics contacted me recently and asked whether REXPaint could export .ans files.

Short answer: No. Longer answer: Yes, just as soon as I look into the format and implement it because, you know, supporting more formats means an application useful for more people. And as it so happens ANSI escape codes are pretty easy to implement.

Regular ANSI as stored in .ans is limited to a 16-color palette, only 8 of which can be used as background colors. Different terminals display the ANSI colors somewhat differently, as you can see in this table:


REXPaint includes the standard VGA color palette by default, though you could convert it to any of the others (or add them separately as new palettes):

Standard VGA palette as it appears in REXPaint

Overall, the REXPaint interface is certainly different from that of your average ANSI art program, but the different features may make it more suitable for certain painting styles.

REXPaint includes the data and instructions for configuring it for ANSI use (all that's required is some file copying), but there's also a pre-configured version available as a separate download, a better option if your primary intent is to draw ANSI art. Even if you download the pre-configured version, you should definitely check out Appendix C in the manual for notes on how ANSI editing works (and, of course, browse the rest for how to use REXPaint in general).

Although editing in ANSI mode loses the palette/color flexibility, you can still take advantage of all the other tools REXPaint has to offer, even layers.

R6 and R6-ANSI are now available for download.

For this release I also took the opportunity to add a few other features, most notably an expansion of image browser functionality to enable duplication, renaming, and deletion of images from within the browser itself.

Also added were some new terminal fonts (8x12, 8x14, 8x16, 10x16), but these are located in a separate directory for R6 so you'll have to move/add them manually if you want to use them. The pre-configured R6-ANSI uses terminal fonts by default, instead of the usual square fonts.

I've made a couple of tweaks and fixes to REXPaint over the past couple months as I've been using it, and thought I'd share the latest build as a public release. R5 is now available for download.

On the download page you'll also find some user-submitted resources including additional fonts. Feel free to submit anything you think would benefit the community! Here's the latest 10x10 font from Drake:

A new version of REXPaint has been released every day since its initial launch, though nothing really worth announcing until now since all known issues are finally fixed and there have been a few improvements like better image border representation and a layer merge command (though how many of you are actually using layers at this point...). We're now at R4.

Anyone who's already downloaded will want to upgrade to the latest version to avoid encountering any of the rare bugs that have now been squashed.

There will be more releases and new features in the future when I start using REXPaint on a greater scale with increasingly complex goals. In the meantime I'll be taking feature requests, but not just for the sake of adding something--you must intend to actually take advantage of them. Feel free to leave a comment below and I'll see what I can do for you.

Yesterday I completed some more of my own test art with REXPaint (which is how I've been discovering areas for improvement) and added it to the gallery. There you'll also find the first REXPaint art aside from my own, a roguelike mockup by qbicfoot.

For any game devs out there who are considering/planning to use ASCII art in their console game/roguelike, I've added details of the .xp file format specification to the manual so you can take advantage of the excellent compression they provide (better than PNGs!) and read images drawn by REXPaint directly into your game. If you'd like to reference or use code that does just that, check out BaconSoap's RexReader C# library which he's generously open sourced on GitHub.

There are a number of ASCII art editors available on the web, but most suffer from poor usability or small feature sets (one notable exception being eigenbom's awesome fork of ASCII Paint). For development of my own projects (see X@COM), I needed an application equipped with a wide range of tools for quickly drawing and manipulating ASCII art, as well as the ability to easily browse the images created as stored in their native format. Thus REXPaint was born.

Hopefully it will also find use as a general purpose ASCII art editor. I'd love to see what people can create with this program, so send me a link/copy if you've made something cool!

At launch the major features of this editor include:

• Edit characters, foreground, and background colors separately
• Draw shapes and text
• Copy/cut/paste areas
• Undo/redo changes
• Preview effects simply by hovering the cursor over the canvas
• Palette manipulation
• Image-wide color tweaking and palette swaps
• True-color RGB/HSV color picker
• Create multi-layered images
• Zooming: Scale an image by changing font size on the fly
• Browse art assets and begin editing at the press of a button
• Images highly compressed
• Export PNGs for use in other programs or on the web
• Skinnable interface

(Check out the features page for some screenshots.)

I say features "at launch" because REXPaint can still be considered a work in progress and will continue to receive updates as necessary. Some features on the to-do list that went unimplemented since I don't really need them yet and I don't know how much demand there would be: lasso selection for copying, image-wide glyph swapping akin to the color swap feature, tool tips on mouse hover, layer color blending, type to search/filter through browseable assets.