Topic: More layers than four? (Read 7782 times)

dagondev · « **on:** March 04, 2016, 11:45:27 PM »

Hi,

just registered, found REXPaint yesterday and absolutely love it.
Fiddling in it quickly hit the wall of having only four layer... Didn`t find solution how resolve this.
So, would be possible to have more layers? Let`s say 10, so all of them would fit shortcuts (1-0)

gumix · « **Reply #1 on:** March 05, 2016, 09:17:29 AM »

I bounced from this limitation too

, I'm hoping in addition to shortucts 0-9, adding scroll up/dn arrows onto layers border wouldn't be impossible.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #2 on:** March 05, 2016, 09:28:20 AM »

Engine-wise, no, there is no real limitation. That was set at 4 purely for UI purposes, to keep it simple. Currently if you need more than 4 layers the only option is to use multiple images (yeah, not ideal for some uses).

There are multiple UI issues with expanding beyond 4, and all of them could be solved, but require more room. The current interface was not built to be very flexible (originally being an in-house tool just for me

), but with more users comes more use case scenarios, so yes I'm gradually working towards that kind of stuff.

More layers would require that they be nameable (too many and you forget what's what--even 4 can be tough to remember!) and more room in the UI and/or scrollability. Overall a good implementation would be a lot of work. I'd love to do it, but I'm too busy right now.

Support for more layers is planned, but it would come as part of a "flexible UI" update that will allow you move tools, and have optional parts of the UI as you see fit.

dagondev · « **Reply #3 on:** June 30, 2016, 08:42:55 AM »

Kyzrati, do you see posibility to allow for some more layers, by guerilla style? Like layers from 5-10 only accessible via keys and listed in manual only. I really like your last addition in that way and I seriously feel limited by only four layers.

Thank you.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #4 on:** June 30, 2016, 09:14:41 AM »

Well, doing it like that would mean you wouldn't have access to the other features like reordering/hiding/locking (or even deleting?) them, not without an additional way to scroll the view which is a good bit more work.

I'll look into it today if I have time, since I'm on vacation, but if it's not something I can do from here, then it would still be a long wait because I'm going to be behind on Cogmind work when I return and therefore focused on that for quite a while :/

More layers is absolutely on the long term plan, though the future implementation would differ from what I can do with it now, and I don't like to waste time implementing something that will just be replaced later.

Glad you like the unrestricted zoom, and I'm all for throwing in little hacks when I can to help users, so hopefully something will be doable here

gumix · « **Reply #5 on:** June 30, 2016, 09:26:35 AM »

I hope you could steal some your own browser's code for allowing 'advanced' ops on layers (even in a modal style) including collapsible groups like in photoshop

Kyzrati · « **Reply #6 on:** June 30, 2016, 09:28:44 AM »

That's something to put in for the future UI, yeah

dagondev · « **Reply #7 on:** June 30, 2016, 10:35:58 AM »

Quote from: Kyzrati on June 30, 2016, 09:14:41 AM

I'll look into it today if I have time, since I'm on vacation, but if it's not something I can do from here, then it would still be a long wait because I'm going to be behind on Cogmind work when I return and therefore focused on that for quite a while :/

Nah, enjoy your vacation, please. I will patiently wait then, I have other things to tackle it as well so no bigges.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #8 on:** June 30, 2016, 10:39:47 AM »

I'm already adding it right now

dagondev · « **Reply #9 on:** June 30, 2016, 11:37:42 AM »

Wow, you are really determined! :p
Please, take care of yourself and allow yourself some rest.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #10 on:** June 30, 2016, 11:42:03 AM »

It's a useful feature that would obviously help more than one user out there, so I'll use some downtime today to get it in there. I've more or less finished adding the foundations for it, but next comes all the testing and making sure it plays nicely with all the other layer-related features (it currently crashes a lot, so it's obviously not done

).

Also, I'm not adding it in a hackish way--it'll be full-featured support for up to 9 layers.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #11 on:** June 30, 2016, 02:31:06 PM »

Done!

~~Just drop this .exe into your current copy of REXPaint and it should Just Work. (No official release for this yet--same version number.)~~
Update: I just made this available as 1.03 on the downloads page.

It is fully backwards compatible with existing images, and probably all the libraries contributed by others (assuming they implemented them to specification

). More info from the updated manual:

Quote

Extended Layers Mode
----------------------
While a single image may include up to nine layers, normally only the lowest four of those will be listed in the Layers window. To view more than that, click the 'E' or press Ctrl-Shift-l to toggle Extended Layers Mode, which will cover the Info window but allow as many as nine layers to be listed at once. If you're using hotkeys for layer control, those will still work as usual even if those layers are not currently visible in the list.
An '*' appears at the top right of the Layers window if an image contains more layers than currently listed, or it will instead show the layer number if a non-listed layer is currently active.

And a demo:

Happy REXPainting!

gumix · « **Reply #12 on:** June 30, 2016, 05:28:48 PM »

Nice expand!
I bet it is matter of time til someone makes "More layers than nine?" topic

Thanks Kyzrati!

Kyzrati · « **Reply #13 on:** June 30, 2016, 05:36:21 PM »

Hahahaha, so true... I hope the 125% increase will keep that time at bay for now

dagondev · « **Reply #14 on:** June 30, 2016, 10:54:20 PM »

Awesome, thank you!

gumix · « **Reply #15 on:** July 01, 2016, 09:22:00 AM »

@K : I'm sooo glad you've preserved shift+RMB on image folders too

Kyzrati · « **Reply #16 on:** July 01, 2016, 09:33:31 AM »

Oh sure, that's an official part of the next release, and I'm just releasing these experimental executables incrementally

. I don't like to do new proper versions purely for a couple new features, but actually this layer change is pretty big so I should probably do a 1.03 for it.

Edit: I just went ahead and made 1.03 official on the downloads page (no real need to get it if you already got the updated .exe, though).

Pyridine · « **Reply #17 on:** July 02, 2016, 02:40:27 PM »

On behalf of library maintainers everywhere, thanks for removing the maximum layer count in REXPaint!

I tried to load a file with 50 layers (which I made with REXSpeeder), and it didn't crash. One seems to be unable to edit any layer past the ninth, though.

I also noticed that if you load an image that already has more than 9 layers, you can keep adding layers to your heart's content. Whereas images created normally in REXPaint can't have more than 9 layers, even if you keep clicking the + button.

Perhaps extreme cases like these aren't your priority right now, but I just wanted to let you know.

Kyzrati · « **Reply #18 on:** July 02, 2016, 03:37:32 PM »

Quote from: Pyridine on July 02, 2016, 02:40:27 PM

On behalf of library maintainers everywhere, thanks for removing the maximum layer count in REXPaint!

I tried to load a file with 50 layers (which I made with REXSpeeder), and it didn't crash. One seems to be unable to edit any layer past the ninth, though.

Correct. In fact, there has never been a 4-layer limit in images! That was merely an editing limit in REXPaint, since the UI as designed couldn't list more than 4, but the file specification has always included a "# of layers" value which could be anything you wanted, for example for those users who might actually generate .xp images through some other means.

All I did was make it so that it's possible to list 9 layers in the REXPaint UI. More is fine as far as the image is concerned, but it's kinda pointless to allow it in RP until you can actually edit that many

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Author Topic: More layers than four? (Read 7782 times)