2D map tool needed

I am a video game-o-phile ( i own 3 full sized cab and 30 + pcb's) and have embarked on a retro rewrite of an exelent neo geo clasic "Blasing star" (like r-type only better), and have hit a snag.

i need a way of creating a set of long tilemaps or images to act as a paralax scrolling background, and not having the paintshop skills need a more simple tool to do this, a fellow blitz programmer has sugested using a tile based system but does not know of any sutable software/ editor

so any sugestions please (try to keep em clean!)BG

Two useful tile map editors availalbe for free are Mappy and Tile Studio. Both have Blitz sample code you can download to get you started.

Note that you will have to make the actual tile graphics in another package like Photoshop (or PaintShop Pro or GIMP or ProMotion etc etc) to use in the map editor.

many thanks will go and download.

out of interest as my paint skilss are not up to the old masters standard, any good 2d tile\sprite resources on the net ?

If you're doing many layers of parallax you'll probably want to speed up the tile-drawing considerably otherwise it can become a significant overhead, I've stuck some code in the code archives to help with this called cache map or summat. It's the only one with my name by it, anyway.

I've found this map maker on the net last week : Cornutopia Mapper.

It is the best map maker I tried : lot of layer, transparent color, simple output. I love it !

interesting code doc, i had not thought of that aproch thanks!