I spent the weekend filling out the "Transform" tab in HeroMachine 3, finally arriving at the following layout of controls:
The main addition to the rotate and scale controls is that you can now manually enter values for scaling an item. These text fields also automatically update while you're scaling the character so you can see what the values are.
The new kid on the block is the "Move item" set of controls. As you can imagine, clicking the various direction arrow moves the current item in that direction. In the middle of the controls are four "multiplier" buttons, so you can move it either 1, 5, 10, or 20 pixels at a time. Of course you can still manually click and drag items around as you like, with the current coordinates automatically displaying while you do so in the appropriate boxes. "Reset Location" will move the item back to the default starting position for everything in that slot.
Still to come on this tab are: grouping controls, so you can (for instance) move/rotate/scale everything in the Body slot all at once; a "reset all" type of button that will reset scale, rotation, and position for the current item with just one click; layering controls; outline options (so you can outline individual items in either black or white -- figuring out how to do that for the full set of colors is a headache I don't need); flipping; some sort of "apply all transformations to ..." button, kind of like the paintbrush in the minis, so you can click on items to apply the current item's scale, position, and rotation. And whatever else y'all think of.
I've gotten a lot accomplished this week. Within the next few days I ought to have enough done to start drawing. The first thing I'll do when that time comes, probably, is to convert all the Zombie and Modern Warrior items over. Luckily that turns out to be pretty easy. Before that can happen, though, I need to nail down the little mini toolbar that gets added to the preview box, currently that's just for show. And I also have to get the preview item tab working properly. I'd say with those completed, I'll have the minimum functionality needed to make drawing worthwhile. The rest of the feature set can get added as I go along.
Let me know if you see something that looks like it won't be good, or if you think of something I ought to add but haven't thought of yet.
