Chronic Logic

I do love this new editor, even though all I can do myself is place tiles, which leads me to my point.

Could someone post a tutorial of just give me a walkthrough for the basic important things?

Lets take gisheditor.txt as base... Descriptions marked with * are important.
Select New Level from the player menu

* F1= Enter and exit editor
                     
A,S,D,W = Pan Screen
* That should be obvious.

Esc = Exit current editor
* There are several sub-editors you'll find below.

Left click = place current tile
Right click = delete selected tile
* Right click just sets the tile to zero.

Shift + Left click (DRAG!) = Select area
Right click = Deselect area

Press 5 to set the selected area as the exit
* Shift-drag the exit area and press 5.

6-8 are for warp zones, which are hardcoded, so with those you can't get far (yet)...

With shift-5-8 you get darker areas. They're probably for some extra areas?

C = copy selected area
Left click to paste copied area
Right click to stop pasting

Del = delete selected area
* BCS-like.

G = Go to tile curser is on
* Sets the tile you see at the bottom left to the tile the cursor is on.

L = Toggles boundary lines
You'll see what it is when you try it.

Q, Z = Cycle through available tiles
Shift + Q. Z = Jump through available tiles by 10
* Go through the tiles by 1 or 10.

Gametype:
 0: Story Mode Level
 1: Collection Mode
 10: Football
 11: Sumo
 12: Amber
 13: Pitfight
 14: Dragster
 15: Vs. collection
Should be obvious. Leave it on 0 until you have learnt the basics.

Gametime:
 Amount of time for collection mode level, 50=1 second
Should be obvious. For one minute set 3000=50*60.

1 = Edit Background
2 = Edit Midground
3 = Edit Foreground
4 = Edit Way Background
* Set the current layer to one of the above.

K = hide all other layers.

Red, Green, Blue = Edits hue of current level layer
Adjusts color for the current layer a bit. The only useful thing you can do with way background, besides setting the texture (below).

Background:
 Name of the background tga
Look for several way backgrounds in texture/
sewer.tga
cave.tga
egypt.tga
church2.tga
   
T = opens tile set editor
   Tile set editor:
   Drag and drop tiles from available tile sets into your current edited tile set.
   Q, Z = Cycle through current tile set page by page
   W, X = Cycle through current tile subset
   Use [ ] to cycle through available tile sets
One of those sub-editors. You can change tilesets with this one.

F7= Load level

F9= Save current level
      A file name must be placed in the level name field to save your level with the        extension .lvl
Reads from or writes to the file name you specified. You need to append .lvl yourself.

F2 = opens tile editor
   Left click and drag to create boundary lines.
       NOTE: Line MUST be placed clockwise!
   Del= Delete last line placed
   Q, Z= Cycle through current tiles
   A= Creates alpha outside boundary lines
   Friction = Amount of friction tile has (0.0-1.0, less than 0.1 gish can't stick)
   Breakpoint = Amount of pressure the tile takes to break (0.0=unbreakable)
   Middamage = Amount of damage tile does to gish
   Foredamage = Same as above but for tiles placed in foreground
   Density = Density of water
   Drag = Drag in water
       Note: Water tiles must be placed in foreground to work!
   Animation = Number of frames that tile will animate through
   Animation speed = Speed of animation
Properties of the current tile (in the bottom left). The lines are the points where you can't go through them. Try them out. I'd start with making corners triangles.

F3 = opens object editor
   Q,Z= Cycles through objects
   [ ] = Cycles through current objects textures
   Arrow keys = Resize current object
   Left click to place objects
       Note: all objects will be invisible till texture is changed
   Right click to select objects
   Del = Deletes selected object
           Object list:
           0= Nothing
           1= Add player
                Home = Gish (set player 1)
                End = Hera (set player 2)
           
           Blocks:
                Mass= object weight
                Arrow Keys= Edit block size
           2= Basic block
           3= Platform with middle hinge
           4= Platform with hinge on left
           5= Platform with hinge on right
           6= Basic Circle
           7= Circle with middle hinge

           8= Light source / anchor point
                Ltype 1 = omni light
      Ltype 2 = light off
                Ltype 3 = flickering omni light
                Red, Green, Blue = Change light color
                Intensity = Change light Intensity
                   
           Buttons:  
                Buttons are used to activate
                anchor points (object 8)
                select the anchor point you want to activate
      Hold K and left click on the button to
                assign that link
           9= Pressure plate
           10= One time button
           11-14= Switch
           15= Area switch
           16= Area switch (one time)

           17= object generator
           18= Secret area marker
           19= Nothing

           Enemies:
           20= Bone nibbler
           21= Cave nibbler
           22= Hell nibbler
           23= Mummy
           24= Skeleton
           25= Zombie
           26= Gimp
           27= Vis sister Boss
           28= Angel Nibbler
           29= Alterboy
           30= Stitch
           31= Poobler
           32= Honey bucket boss
           33= Sister Vis boss
           34= Paunchy chops boss
           35= Basinjin boss
           36= Satan
* First select the number of the thing you want to put on teh map with (shift-)Q/Z. For lights use 8, and specify the Ltype. I'd start with object 2: a simple box. Try [] for different textures (none by default!) and arrow keys for resizing. You can link them together using the rope editor.

F4 = opens rope editor
   Hold 1 Left Click = Add light rope
   Hold 2 Left Click = Add heavy rope
   Hold 3 Left Click = Add light chain
   Hold 4 Left Click = Add Heavy chain
   Hold 5 Left Click = Add a push piston
   Hold 6 Left Click = Add half pushed piston
   Hold 7 Left Click = Add a pull piston
   Hold 8 Left Click = Add half pulled piston
   Hold 9 Left Click = Add Bar
       Q. Z = make pistons and bars visible.
First select the texture you want to use with Q/Z (you can do 0-3, but 1-3 are the same), hold down 1-9 depending on what kind of connection you want to make (ropes and chains are obvious, bars are 'hard' links between objects, pistons grow/shrink), click on the start point and then end point of the rope. With right-click you can remove a rope at one of the ends.
   
Advanced piston editing (not for kids)
  to edit the length, speed and revolution of a piston
go into the object editor select the anchor point that the
piston is attached to.
      Red= Length piston extends or contracts (1=1 tile length)
      Green= Seconds per revolution
      Blue= Number of revolutions
NOTE: All Pistons must be attached from the anchor to the object or it wont work!!!!
NOTE: All pistons attached to the anchor will be affected in the same way.
NOTE: If the anchor point is linked to a button the piston will wait until it
     is activated to move
NOTE: Anchors with pistons shouldnt be used as lights.
NOTE: Pistons attached to anchors to wheels is hella complicated!
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE.
Pistons are those growing/shrinking bars. You'll probably figure them out when you know the rest.

You can link pistons to switches by K-clicking. If you don't, they start doing what you specified when you start the level.

F5 = Reset current level
* Reset everything to start positions, and apply changes (!!!).

If you exit without saving you can reload your level as backup.lvl
In case you didn't save and you got out of the new level thing somehow. May help a bit after a crash as well.

I found everything by trying it.

P.S. The editing area on this form is really small for this! (I can scroll about 20 'pages')

Nice, that's helpful, even though its just rephrased!

I've got a problem with the Background field. If I put in one of the backgrounds: Egypt.tga, Sewer.tga, etc. all that happens is the Way Background turns white... Am I doing something wrong?

Are you sure you spelled it correctly? Also, if Gish is stored on a case-sensitive file system you must use the right case (you should anyway). My machine that's capable of running Gish (and the only one holding it) broke, so I can't check anything myself.

I am having a big problem.  I have Gish on a Macintosh (Mac) running version 10.4.7 and whenever I open a level file I saved all the tiles (nothing else) look like "color fuzz".  It's driving me insane!

I'm wondering why everything ends up in this nearly two-year-old thread. Anyway, the problem that causes "color fuzz" on the Mac is invertible, and in fact its own inverse! That is, try saving then loading.

Maybe I'll try to figure out what Gish does to the maps sometime. Would be interesting to know.

what's way background?

Way background is the layer behind all tiles, the background image. Obviously there are no tiles to edit there, but you can change the color.

At least that's how I remember it...

There are four layers in this game, BackGround, Midground, Foreground, Way BackGround.


Foreground= the layer that is in front of Gish.
Midground= the layer that Gish can move on.
Background= the layer that's behind Gish.
Way Background= the layer that holds the background image.