NetPanzer Map Editor

A Qt5-based map editor for the netPanzer open-source real-time strategy game.

Status

The editor is functional but still early in development. Creating a polished map from scratch is challenging — there is no flood-fill or per-tile attribute editing yet.

The most practical workflow is to open an existing .npm map, reshape terrain and structures with the tools below, and save it under a new name.

Features

• Open and save netPanzer .npm maps (binary format, verified round-trip) — see docs/map-format.md
• Add new tiles to any .tls tileset via tools/add_tile.py — see docs/adding-tiles.md
• Tile painting with full undo/redo
• Ellipse paint tool — drag to paint tiles along an ellipse outline
• Rect select and stamp system — drag-select a region, save as a stamp, place with one click; pre-built stamps auto-loaded from data/stamps/ at startup; Over 100 preset stamps (houses, mountains, roads, rivers, trees, lakes, outpost structures) imported from the original Flexlay editor via tools/import_flexlay_brushes.py
• Tile pick tool — click any map tile to select it for painting
• Autotile — automatic transition-tile selection based on 8-neighbour bitmask; enabled when a .autotile.json sidecar is found for the loaded tileset (see docs/autotile-format.md)
• summer12mb autotile support — bitmask mappings derived from tile imagery via tools/derive_autotile_bitmasks.py; mountain/water/wall/road/grass/river covered
• Tileset auto-detected when opening a map or creating a new one
• Tile browser with jump-to-ID search
• Place and move outpost and spawn-point objects
• Object renaming via double-click or context menu
• Minimap with viewport overlay and click-to-pan
• Zoom toward cursor
• Keyboard shortcuts: T (tile paint), E (ellipse), U (rect outline), I (pick), R (rect select), F (rect fill), M (stamp), O (place outpost), S (spawn point), V (select object), G (grid)

Workflows

Capture a map region as a stamp and save it

1. Press R to switch to the Rect Select tool.
2. Drag across the map to select the region you want to capture. A yellow highlight shows the selection.
3. Open the Stamps panel (View → Stamps if it isn't visible).
4. Click Capture Selection — the region is added as a new stamp.
5. Click the stamp to select it, then click Save… to write it to a .stamp.json file. Saved stamps can be reloaded with Load… in any future session.

To place the stamp, press M (Stamp Paint) and click on the map.

Load stamps from a directory

Stamps in data/stamps/ are loaded automatically at startup. You can drop additional .stamp.json files there, or use Load… in the Stamps panel to load them from any location.

Drag-select tiles in the tile browser

You can also drag-select a rectangular region in the Tile Browser to create a multi-tile stamp directly from the tileset — release the mouse to send it straight to the active stamp.

Building

See BUILD.md for full build and AppImage instructions.

Quick start:

meson setup build
ninja -C build
./build/netpanzer-editor

License

GNU GPL v3 — see COPYING for details. Original Flexlay code by Ingo Ruhnke <grumbel@gmx.de>. Qt5 port by andy5995.