Mistal's Notepad (or Wordpad) Editing!

Just tried it out in Windows 11 and it works great! Thank you and Mistal so very much! I'm hoping that I can put up walls that line up now.

I will say this: Oaky has a series of videos (starting at post #58; the videos mentioned before that are a bunch of Valzen's instructional vids that are no longer with us :-/) in the Decorator's Resource forum about using coordinates to line up and place Tiles, Dividers (for re-skinning, etc.), you name it, mostly using JesDyr's Layout Editor's Copy Location Info/Paste Location Info method. But you can still do so in Notepad; it just takes a bit longer (trust me on this; I've made domes using Notepad)... ;->

Basically, like in Oaky's vids, you've got, say, a Tile or Divider set up as your default, ready to go. For the sake of argument, let's say it's a Narrow Divider, facing North, whose West/East, Up/Down, North/South coordinates are:

123.45, 6.7, 89.11 [pared down from the eight digits after the decimal]

and the rest would be like 0.00 or 90.00, something sane and reassuring for the other numbers. If you want to plunk down a handful more Dividers along its line going East/West, if you don't change any other numbers of that initial one or the new Dividers, especially not Scale (which would be at 1.00000000 for a default in any layout file; not larger or smaller), to get them to line up after you've plopped them in a pile nearby, you'd change their coordinates from wherever they started out being to something like this:

125.45, 6.7, 89.11 [1st Divider added next to the original, heading West]
127.45, 6.7, 89.11 [2nd]
129.45, 6.7, 89.11 [3rd]
131.45, 6.7, 89.11 [4th]
133.45, 6.7, 89.11 [5th]

They're all heading West, since that first coordinate number is getting bigger (and they're all staying at the same North/South coordinates, so they're all in a nice straight line -- well, budding young wall by this point). And you're increasing that number by 2 at a time, because the width of a Narrow Divider is one "unit," be it a foot or yard or meter or whatever they're using, and the Dividers are all at Scale 1.00 (in other words, they're still only taking up one unit of room each). If you were to increase that first number by only 1, for 126.45, 127.45, 128.45, etc., you'd only wind up scooching the Divider in question over about half-way, and you'd get all sorts of painful visual vibrations set up (sometimes you want those, for cool effects, but not usually).

Oaky does a way better job of explaining than I do, again largely through the use of JesDyr's Layout Editor, but you can still make the adjustments you need to with the Notepad Method. "Don't panic; it's just numbers."

Uwk
who firmly believes, "Anything JesDyr's does, Note can do better/Notepad does anything better than Jes." Well, not actually better, but just as good, if more slowly; but at least with Notepad, you don't need all those extra files... ;->

Oh dear, it appears that Valzen's videos have been taken down or removed from YouTube.

Notepad came in very handy when I was putting room dividers along one of the sides of my skyblade. I needed to tweak some of the co-ordinates and trust me, I have nothing but time and a lot of patience.

Heh! Amen.

Not to muddy the waters, but I do like Sennen's OpenSource editor a lot, though Notepad is still an excellent "training method" for that (and handy if you've got a really paranoid antivirus ["What file is this that wants to run/On 'box on lap that's grinding..."] that doesn't like odd things from odd sites; took me forever to convince mine ;->), and I'll still use it if I have to "convince" any of the fancier layout editors that no, I really do mean this, o program, you WILL obey me... ;->

It's like how we were grateful that our Drafting 1A prof had us do three weeks of just pencil/paper/T-square/protractor geometry before he'd let us go wild in AutoCAD: there were times the computer wasn't gonna play at all, nope, no way, so using our paper drafting techniques, we could do a workaround.

Uwk

I use Notepad Light. Saves files as plain text. I haven't tried editing a room yet though.

As long as it can do it, go for it (I've heard even WordPad wouldn't be too onerous, though I've always preferred the no-frills of "full" Notepad [what doesn't Notepad Light have? how much more no-frills can you get? :-/]).

I'd recommend not having a .extension, but just saving it under All Files to let the native format have its way; otherwise, the room in game might not recognize it. :-/

Uwk

Sorry, EditPad Lite.

Here is the page, long list of things it can do. I use it for my html pages on my web sites.

https://www.editpadlite.com/

I've downloaded editors and videos... I kinda like math... I might get done by Spring, of some year.

I setup a test Inn room in Qeynos, put a treasure hoard in it. And saved the room layout with a wide divider in it. Loaded the room layout in a layout editor, and I see it is a nice look in the editor. Maybe I'll have time next week to bounce the divider around that empty inn two rooms.

Does the Notepad write-up work for that for you?

Granted, you don't have a lot of items in it yet, but that shouldn't complicate things too much.

Uwk

Okay, that. Looks. COOL!

Line numbering and everything!

Uwk

I tend to be a little OCD and now that I know how to use notepad, I set it all up in Excell where I can keep track of every item, what room it's in, which wall, etc. I would give an example but IDK how to insert a file

It's tricky; generally, I think most folks just do a screenshot image post (go to your favorite 3rd-party image hosting site [I like DeviantArt.com] with your screenshot file, publish it there, bring it up on another page by itself [right-click and View Image or whatever it takes], copy that URL, come back here to an open post, click on the li'l Insert/Edit Image button [looks like a tree in a field], past the URL in the open window that comes up, sit back and marvel at your lovely work!). Others are clever enough to be able to post a link to a Google Document or whatever; I am not among them. :-/

Yes, Excel or any other spreadsheet program (I like Kingsoft's; it has advantages) will help you keep track of things, but as far as I know, it isn't "dipped into" by the game as an indication of what things you're able to do with the actual items in the actual layout file. Notepad is, because it's so bare-bones; I'm not sure about WordPad, even, if that's bare-bones enough. :-/

In other words, if you change things in the Excel file, don't necessarily expect them to be changed in your house, the way doing things in Notepad or JesDyr's or Sennen's would, and changing things in the house wouldn't be reflected in the Excel file.

As far as I know; I do think that an Excel or other spreadsheet file is more like a "snapshot of time" that can be referred back to, just in case. Many's the time I've saved big, complex layouts that way, just from being paranoid about messing something up and needing notes to remind me how it worked before... ;->

Uwk
who generally uses a spreadsheet in the planning stages, to also remind me of a brilliant idea I'd had and to make SURE I'd actually remembered to do it (I'd messed up that way recently; I thought I'd entered The Brilliant Idea in my list, basically, of things to do or have done, and I hadn't...and forgotten all about it until after a deadline X-P)...

I've used DeviantArt for posting my photo manipulations, but I didn't know that they were a 3rd party image hosting site. As far as Excel goes, I just use it to set up each item as to the digital info and my own personal notes. I like to import a copy of the notepad file after I'm finished for the day. It helps me keep things sorted and it's easier to read than the notepad. But all of my changes are made directly on notepad. I love Excel and have been using it for years. It's a great way to keep track of stuff, like my glucose readings which I can then send to my doctor once a month.
I have noticed that I can have a row or two of tiles lined up perfectly then come back later and they've moved.

Ah! Okay, I was just confused; you apparently do the same thing I do with my spreadsheets.

And yeah, I'd put ol' dA in the category of "3rd party image hosting sites" simply because we can't directly upload an image here from like our hard drive; was very aggravating when I first tried it. I do all my posting from dA.

When you say your row of tiles has moved, what do you mean? Have they gone back to their original position, before you laid them out? :-/

What I've always done with Notepad is made my change in the room, saved it, then opened Notepad and looked to see that the changes were accepted. Then I close it, and go back into the room for more tweaks, save the layout file, re-open the Notepad file, lather, rinse, repeat. That might not be necessary, but that's the way I've always done it. :-/

Which is why I way prefer Sennen's, even above and beyond Notepad after all this time; it's laid out a lot like JesDyr's, but my favorite thing about it is that I don't have to close anything, just blip back and forth between the saved house file and the open layout file rather effortlessly (without needing any auxiliary things, like WITH, WITHOUT, WORKING, WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHATEVER sorts of files like JesDyr's can require [when I use his, I treat it like Notepad: I'll edit in the house with the layout editor closed, then open it up again] :-/). Though Sennen's editor does, as JesDyr himself pointed out way back when, have a tendency to get a little imprecise, like if you set a number to something like 123.45670000, it may tweak it to 123.45669875 the next time you see it...but even I'm not that OCD to fix it back (/twitch_twitch Honest...).

It also can't do lovely things like move items along the other four major compass lines (NW/SE/NE/SW) or Copy Location Info and Paste Location Info, but if I really need things like that, that's what a) JesDyr's is for, or b) Notepad, for things like multiple instances of the same item.

But for all Sennen's layout editor's faults, I love it for the sheer convenience, and I use it like 98+% of the time.

Uwk