Posted on Sunday 13 March 2005
Just finished version 2 of the pixel tools for Flash. The pixel tools are a set of JSFL tools that allow you to make pixel perfect drawings in the Flash IDE. These drawings won’t degrade when the player’s low-quality setting is used.
Version 2 brings quite a few enhancements:
- New tool: Pixel eraser (thanks to Julian Dolce)
- New tool: Pixel ellipse (as requested by Ibis Fernandez)
- Better preview on all tools: small cross or single pixel indicates where the first pixel will fall. You can ‘feel the grid’ so that first pixel is exactly where you want it to be.
- Various bug fixes (including reported crashes)
That brings the tool list to 5:
- Pixel line: pixelated line made of fills that snaps to iso, 45, horizontal and diagonal on demand. Can also create dashed lines.
- Pixel rectangle: like the regular rectangle but snaps to pixels and has stroke made of fills (you never know where regular lines end up on low quality setting)
- Pixel freehand: draws pixels much like a pen tool
- Pixel eraser: erase pixels
- Pixel ellipse: pixelated oval or circle
Get it while it’s hot. Also in zip format.
Installation:
- Double-click the mxp file. The extension manager should pop-up. Agree to the License agreement.
- Restart Flash
- Open a new document. Go into Edit > Customize Tools panel. Click on an icon on the left, then select one of the pixel tools and click >> to add the tool to your tool panel.
Known bugs:
- Pixel eraser: erased pixels are not perfectly square (1.1×1.0). This is because setSelectionRect is extremely buggy for small selections, if you ask it to select a 1 by 1 pixel, you may get 0.9 to 1.1 depending on where on stage you are. Also, if you select a 1 by 1 pixel on the left of a ‘hole’ in a shape, it fills the shape for some reason. I’ve worked around this last bug by moving the bounds by some arbitrary amount but that means pixels erased are a bit bigger than 1 by 1.
- Pixel ellipse: center will be filled white if fill is disabled. 1 pixel outline shows a few barely noticeable extra pixels. This is because to create outlines I make a bigger oval and then a smaller one inside of it.
