Polka 2 is the evolution of the Polka tile editor for screens 2 and 4 of the MSX computer system. This version aims to be a generalised version of a retro graphics editor with map editting functionality.
The application took form after some internal editing programmes collapsed under their complexity. Polka 2 needed to fill the needs of those attempts while maintaining more manageable code. This meant that Polka 2 became as much a programming exercise as a an application. Some of the things we tried are a completely generic user interface, full undo/redo functionality, normal copy/paste functionality and trying to find a way good way to avoid the complexity pitfalls from earlier work. So far we can claim partial success.
The source is released under the GNU General Public License version 3. Check the COPYING file for the full details.
If you have any comments, suggestions or would like to participate in the project, send a mail to edwin@infinitemsx.com or check out the GitHub source repository at:
https://github.com/edwin-v/polka2
The code uses the gtkmm3 toolkit and its dependencies. Use the package manager of your distribution to install the gtkmm3 development package. Other than that you need a reasonably modern g++ compiler with support for some of the c++0x/c++11 features. Building should be a simple as:
make
If successful, you will find an executable file in derived/bin/polka2. Since this does not depend on anything else, it can be copied and run from any location.
There is no official release of gtk3 or gtkmm3 for Windows at this time. However, you can get a mostly functional build system from this location:
http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/23
After installing this, you will need a few extra files to complete the build system by putting the following files in the gtkmm3/bin directory:
mingw32-make.exe => http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW/Extension/make/make-3.82-mingw32/
echo.exe mkdir.exe rm.exe sed.exe which.exe => http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/
After this, the source can be built from this directory using the following command from the command shell:
mingw32-make
After building has completed successfully, the executable is available in derived\bin\polka2.exe. This can be installed anywhere.
Note that the suggested build system is experimental and does not include the rendering engines that would normally be present in the official distribution. This means that that themes will only work partially. So don't expect the best appearance at this time.
Other systems are currently untested. However, if a working gtkmm3 environment can be installed and a GCC toolchain and unix shell is available, it should work.