egomassive's Knytt Stories Plus mod

Backdrops are displayed under objects, so there's no need to move stuff to layer 3.

But, I want layer 7 objects to appear in front of the foreground tiles. And they will need to be moved behind any layer 2 object that was created before them, unless they have their own layer to exist on.

Then you can move them behind the lowest of 2nd layer objects, like it's done with umbrella normally.
Is flag warps speed-up relevant to normal KS warps too?

I'm so fantastically pleased with the work you guys have been doing to increase the usability of Knytt Stories.  Especially since it seems the knyttwadf game will be basically limited to black tilesets.

  Especially since it seems the knyttwadf game will be basically limited to black tilesets.

are you assuming that from the screenshots? i find it very unlikely

@ GrayFace: I just sped up the flag warps a bit. Originally the game read in all possible flag warp positions, e.g. FlagWarpX(A). With my addition of a Flag(All) and Artifact flag warping the game had to read in 8 positions from the ini and then check if the locations were Artifact dependent. The game could only do one flag warp, so I just changed it to read in positions after it knew which ones it needed. It's a small improvement, but with all the additions I've made, I need all the speed-ups I can get to keep it playing like the original, especially during room changes. I mostly mentioned it, so that people would know what was up if I created a bug that didn't show up in my tests.

@ Headgrinder: Nifflas only wanted black tiles for his levels, but Knytt/WaDF supports color tiles. When it was first announced I felt like making this mod would have little point, but as details came out I realized Knytt/WaDF is going to be different enough from Knytt Stories that it wont kill all KS level production.

I think I knew it supported color, but as you say, it seems very different from KS.  It seems the tilesets will be less used and object use will be more prominent.  I suppose I could get use to it, but frankly I'm not much in to wadf anyway.  I could never get use to the ball physics.

Exciting News! Foreground tiles are working. With a nudge from Headgrinder and advice from Grayface, I revisited this improvement. It was surprisingly easy to implement, and it will be even easier to use. The way it works is layer 2 is drawn between layers 6 and 7 when you add the instruction:
[x1000y1000]
Overlay=True
Expect to have it in the next release. Which I'll probably do after more testing --it was too easy, there must be a disaster hiding somewhere.

Originally I wanted to activate overlays with an object, but when I started working on it I realized that would have caused the same flash you get from objects and custom objects as well as a bit of slow down since layer 2 would've been drawn twice. Using an ini instruction is fast and free of flashes.

The foreground layer thing is really starting to make me consider porting my in progress level to your mod...
It really sucks that both your mod and Gray's mod have such good features, and I want to use some from both mods so it's really hard to decide.

I'm thinking of making an easy way to convert layers into overlay objects, but implementation is problematic.

@ Raicuparta: I agree that my mod is pretty irresistible, but if you planned to use Ks Ex's Template Objects then I don't think you should switch. GrayFace and I borrow each others ideas, but TOs are something my mod will never have. Then, the fact that you can use Lua scripts in KS Ex means that if it doesn't have something you want you can probably add it.

@ GrayFace: I had originally tried to draw layer 2 to an object, but I didn't get anywhere with that approach. However, my efforts were far from exhaustive. Considering that your mod has optional rendering orders, I bet it will be a bear of a task. Good luck.

My plan is to do it in the editor. In the game I've used an extension that makes screenshots. I can make 2 screenshots, one on black background, the other on white. Based on them I can figure out semi-transparency and original color of pixels, and create a .png in the end. I did similar things with PNG in Delphi, but MMF2 extensions are written in C++, so I'll probably have to use a dll made in Delphi if I set out to do it.

A bug: map is reset when triggers spawn new objects. Open the map with M and then execute a trigger to see.

Nice catch GrayFace. All the map tiles move to the spawn location.

Progress Report: I've been making graphics for the Level Editor mod. The dialogue section needs lots of buttons. Before that I changed this mod to format 4, and built in a link to GrayFace's mod for format 3 levels.

Any idea when a beta of the level editor will be out?