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[Kyzrati]

REXPaint is a little side project I worked on for the past couple weeks to use as a development tool for a project I'm working on (X@COM). It's useful for roguelike mockups and general art using the extended ASCII code page 437. There are already other similar applications out there (many of them here on TIGForums), but I'll be needing more/certain features that they lack so I whipped this together and am sharing it here.

I've done what I can to make it possible to quickly create and tweak art. Press F1 for a list of core commands, and see the included manual.txt for a list of the advanced commands.

REXPaint is missing some of the features you might find in eigenbom's ASCII Paint fork, but includes others he left out which I really need for my purposes, namely things like easier palette manipulation and color tweaking, a compressed image format, and in-program asset browser for viewing large numbers of images in their native format. Wall/box drawing mode should save you some time, too.

I may add layer blending and other features if there's any demand, but something tells me the TIGForums are ASCII'ed out by this point


Art by RP users (see the gallery for credits, as well as other associated resources):

[Pineapple]

I may add layer blending and other features if there's any demand, but something tells me the TIGForums are ASCII'ed out by this point

 

No such thing.

[gimymblert]

FUCK YEAH Layer BLENDING !!

[eigenbom]

never enough ascii...

image by i forget who

[qbicfeet]

This is a great program, much more suited for my needs than other ASCII art editors. Thanks for making it!

... I registered just to say that

Might as well show off what I've done so far while I'm at it:



I also made this custom 10x10 font to better suit my ASCII art (mostly a few changes to the graphical symbols and some more consistent letters):



Lastly, I put together three (well, three-in-one) 16-color-palette that gives me some limitations to work with (pastebin link).

[Pineapple]

Might as well show off what I've done so far while I'm at it:

I want to play that game.

[Kyzrati]

This is a great program, much more suited for my needs than other ASCII art editors. Thanks for making it!

... I registered just to say that

Well thanks, I'm glad that others are finding it useful despite the fact that there have been other options out there. There's certainly a different feel to using it as I wanted it to be similar to the other kinds of graphical programs that I use, and also geared as much toward productivity as possible.

Nice to see what you've done with it so far!

I also made this custom 10x10 font to better suit my ASCII art (mostly a few changes to the graphical symbols and some more consistent letters):

Lastly, I put together three (well, three-in-one) 16-color-palette that gives me some limitations to work with (pastebin link).

Cool, I should add a resources section to the downloads page where others can make use of these tools and whatever others come up with.

Although I've already spent a good amount of time putting together the existing set of fonts I'll probably continue tweaking them, but as you've found it's true that some of the letters within a single font may appear a bit inconsistent since one of my focuses has been on making sure images created at one size won't feel too different at other sizes, so I spent most of my efforts cross-referencing the glyphs at different sizes. I also wanted to maintain a bit of the cp437 style at all levels (8x8 being an exception--it's just too small and I won't be using it for my game anyway).

[Kyzrati]

Might as well show off what I've done so far while I'm at it:

If you don't mind, your great mockup found its way into the gallery yesterday where someone already commented on it:

Damn, that's such a nice Zelda mockup.

[qbicfeet]

Might as well show off what I've done so far while I'm at it:

If you don't mind, your great mockup found its way into the gallery yesterday where someone already commented on it:

Damn, that's such a nice Zelda mockup.

Haha that's great! I really want to make some kind of game with 3/4 perspective ASCII graphics and Zelda-style gameplay that is not bound to a grid. A "fake" roguelike of some sort. I think the result could be quite interesting.

By the way, I noticed I forgot the ampersand in my custom font, so here's a revision. There's also some minor changes to the 25%/50%/75% shades characters.

[Kyzrati]

A game where you swig beer and splatter goblins across the lawn? Hehe, Zelda's all grown up!

An ASCII game *not* bound to a grid sure seems counterintuitive. Could be interesting to at least prototype to see how it feels, though.

I updated your font on the site since at least a couple people have been interested in using your additional resources over there.

[Kyzrati]

Just updated REXPaint with the ability to export .ans files for ANSI art, along with some other functionality. Details here: http://rexpaint.blogspot.com/2013/09/ansi-has-landed.html

[Trihook]

Could you please add support for fonts with more than 256 characters?

[Kyzrati]

I do plan on adding that at some point.

REXPaint already supports any number of characters internally, the only limiting factor is the interface since there's no way to scroll down to other characters in a font.

May I ask why you need more than 256 characters in a single image? That's already a heck of a lot. You could edit the font file (or create your own) to remove characters you aren't using and replace them with others you are.

[Trihook]

[Kyzrati]

Wow Trihook, that tileset is nice (I didn't receive the post notification, so I didn't get to see it until now!). Unfortunately I haven't gotten around to adding 257+ character support yet.

I have, however, just released a new version of REXPaint with a fair number of new features. Check it out here (along with some sample art by myself and ShroomArts).

REXPaint beta v0.97r7 (140206)

* NEW: Export pure text (Ctrl-t)
* NEW: Export to CSV (Ctrl-k)
* NEW: Export to XML (Ctrl-m)
* NEW: Export to XPM (Ctrl-p)
* NEW: Image-wide swapping of glyphs (Ctrl-LMB in font window)
* NEW: Toggle highlighting of already-used glyphs ('u')
* NEW: Multiple paste modes, added to support flipping/rotation of clipboard contents
* NEW: Set the grid glyph manually via config file
* NEW: Change grid resolution in program (Shift-Wheel)
* NEW: Hold Alt key while hovering over a glyph in font selection window to highlight all uses in current layer
* NEW: Grid can by set to appear under image (i.e. in undrawn areas only) (Alt-g)
* NEW: Text tool supports multiple lines (Ctrl-Enter), started directly below current line
* NEW: Text tool can recall any previously entered text for later use (Up/Down to cycle through history)
* NEW: Additional command for viewing previous/next image in browser (Shift-Wheel)
* NEW: Non-filled rects drawn with a single/double line glyph automatically draw a properly oriented ASCII box
* MOD: Ovals drawn from centerpoint by default (switch to corner mode via Alt-o)
* MOD: "File" menu renamed to "Image"
* FIX: Alt-key commands no longer cause system beeps (Windows)

[Kyzrati]

Little update: You can now export BBCode with REXPaint! (Ctrl-b) Gimmicky, yes, but it was easy to implement once I added proper unicode support, so why not

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!):


Said BBCode:

√▄▄▄▄╤╤╤┐
\Ö╛_\▄▄▄┘
 ▌/ ╨╨╨╨ 
 \       


(The only caveat is that due to how text is converted in web browsers, some spaces in the image may collapse *if* you re-access the BBCode in your browser by modifying a post or quoting it--the code must be copied *directly* from the output text file into the post, and will always appear correctly unless changed/re-used afterward. To re-use, copy the BBCode again from the original output file.)

Also, added some gallery art to the OP.


Edit: Regarding BBCode, I've also discovered that colored foreground blocks work okay for drawing makeshift backgrounds, and keep spacing regardless of copy-pasting. Those could be another way to avoid space collapse issues.

[eigenbom]

Lol, awesome

[Kyzrati]

No idea how this is going to turn out, but we'll call him BBMan:


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Edit: Seems to turn out okay if you have your browser zoomed just right, otherwise there are less than pleasing line/spacing issues.

[eigenbom]

Heh, not bad

[Pishtaco]

This is a fantastic piece of software, thanks very much for working on it (and to everyone who worked on earlier versions). I'm amazed at how polished it is.

I've been using it for a roguelike -


Mockup


Portraits