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Start the editor and place a few brushes using two different tiles.
Press [space] key. You are now in the select mode,
where you can select more brushes, move them, delete them and even change some of their properties, all at once.
The mouse pointer will show it's current coordinates in the world.
Brush selections
You can select more brushes by marking a rectangle arround them.
Press and hold the left mouse button  , drag the mouse to the bottom and to the right to size the selection's rectangle.
When finished, release the mouse button .
The brushes inside the selection become selected and start to flash.
During your selection process, you can use the arrows keys to scroll the map if necessary.
You can use [shift] and [alt] to add or substract from an already existing selection.
Once you have some selected brushes flashing, you can move them using the right mouse button  and dragging
them arround the map. Again, you can use the arrows keys to scroll if necessary.
The brushes will remember their selected status when returning in paint mode, by pressing [space] key again,
and even when the map and the editor are closed.
You can delete all of them by pressing the [delete] key, you can copy them into a temporary clipboard with [ctrl]+[C],
cut (copy and delete) them with [ctrl]+[X] and you can paste them again on the map with [ctrl]+[V].
Your mouse cursor should be inside the tilemap area of the interface for those to work.
This copy and paste technique is very usefull to duplicate parts of your map, or compositions of brushes,
like trees or houses, but you must take care of a few things:
The pasted brushes will be added on the map exactly at their previous positions,
where you usually have the original brushes you copied in the clipboard.
If so, you'll have to move them before loosing the selection, to avoid having two duplicated brushes in the same place,
overlapping wach other. Overlapping brushes are difficult to spot or to select individually because they
would be both in the selecting rectangle. So, a copy-paste operation is almost always followed by a move one.
Another thing to remember is that this duplicating technique makes an exact copy of each selected brush,
including all the properties. You must not forget to adjust some of the properties if required.
Like to avoid having two brushes with the same value in the ID property.
Selection scripts
There are a few commands in the select scripts menu
that will help you with your selections.
The invert command will toggle the selection, by deselecting the current selected brushes
and select all the others from the map. The number of selected brushes is displayed at the top left corner of the interface.
The move command will help you move all the selected brushes using horizontal and vertical offsets.
This can be usefull for moving all the brushes from the map to the right, if you must add rooms at it's left side.
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Sometimes, while debuging a game, you have a brush index (not ID) and want to see the coresponding brush on the map.
The select by index command will help you select a single brush with a specific index (not ID).
That is the N-th brush from the brushes list.
Consider that while editing the map the internal order of brushes and their indexes may change.
It's important to know that the game keeps two brushes lists, one for static and one dynamic brushes, both having
their indexes starting from 0. Of course, the sum of all elements in these lists is the total number of brushes in the map.
The select by index dialog allows you to specify what you are looking for.
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The keep topmost command will keep selected the last brush from a selection, in the brushes order.
This last brush is usually the one standing visible above all others.
The command is used to select and then move one of two overlapping brushes that were duplicated by accident.
The set block and set unblock commands can
be used to set the material property of the selected brushes to block or to air, for faster editing.
The set group id allows you to set incrementing brush IDs to the
selected brushes. If you have a few dynamic brushes that you want to use in game as a group, like some rain drops,
or water bubbles, you can avoid giving them unique IDs, one by one, from the brush properties dialog.
Use this command by specify the ID of the first brush and all the others will receive consecutive IDs.
Search and change
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You can use the Brush Search dialog to make or adjust a selection based on some common brush properties.
For example, if you want to select all the brushes representing pickable items in your map, you must check
the class property in the search dialog, set it's value to item and then hit the search button.
All the brushes with the specified values in the checked properties will be selected and all other will be deselected.
You can now filter this selection by substracting (SUB) from the selection all the brushes that have the type property
set to dynamic as all pickable items should have. If there are brushes that remain selected after this filter,
you found a mistake and you have to correct it, either by makeing them dynamic brushes or by setting their class to none.
You can either do so for each brush, using the brush menu in the paint mode,
or you can use the change dialog to adjust them all at once.
The search supports negative matches too. click the check box twice to search brushes that don't match that value.
This is very useful to filter selections, for example, to keep selected only the brushes with any color but blue.
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The Brush Change dialog is very similar to the search one. You check the properties you want to change,
set the new values you want to apply and hit the change button.
These two dialogs are very usefull while editing maps, helping you to quickly adjust more brushes at once and
to spot eventual mistakes.
Debug scripts
These commands are useful for spotting eventual mistakes or problems with your map.
So always use them to check your maps before releasing them.
Check missing tiles will search and select all the brushes that have the tile property
set to a tile that is not present in the current tiles folder (or could not be loaded).
These brushes that miss their tiles are displayed as rectangles with diagonals.
If you have a huge map and you messed up the tiles folder, it may be hard for you to spot them without this command.
Check duplicate ids selects all the brushes that have duplicate ids.
You must check them and change the ids to keep them unique.
Check overlapping will select all brushes with the same position size and tile and mapping.
These are supposed to be overlapped by accident. Use select topmost to separate or delete some of them.
Check dynamic ids will select all dynamic brushes that have no id set.
You should check them and see if they need ids or if they should not be dynamic.
Check static ids does the opposite, selecting all the static brushes with non-zero ids.
Make sure those are needed to be accessed in the game, or if they should be dynamic.
Count rooms is usefull to count how many rooms with content your map has.
A room is considered to be with content if at least one brush is well inside it (not barely touching it from the next room).
This script also marks these rooms with green transparent brushes,
so make sure you SAVE your map BEFORE using it and load it again after the counting.
User scripts
This menu is intended for advanced users who can add their own specific scripts in the editor.gs file
found next to the editor's executable. The editor uses GS9 scripting language and has a specific set of exported funcitons
to work with. You can unpack (with the pak.exe tool) the editor.pak file that contains the editor's data and it's default scripts,
to inspect how these scripts work.
Beside input for this user scripts menu, in the editor.gs file, you'll find a few callback functions
where you can customize the browser of brush or room user properties, like to choose the values from
a custom pull-down menu, or to add more dynamic brushes classes, specific for your game.
So, this editor.gs file can be edited to customize the editor for a specific game.
I will not go into details about this but if you need more help, you can contact me about it.
Conclusion
In this chapter, you have learned about the select mode, and how to search and change more brushes at once.
You also have learned how to check your maps, before you release them.
Now, you should have a good understanding of what a brush means and how you can create the game maps using the DizzyAGE editor.
If so, you are ready to start working on your maps, or to proceed further with the documentation.
Good luck!
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