From Editors to level Debug :-)

The truth is that level debug starts gradually since the creation of the collision layer, but for this case its after setting up the level items :-p.

Levels never click right from the first design there is always something to fix to tweak to replace or delete :-p

I really hope you enjoyed the gradual steps to the creation of a platform level. Suprisingly this is not known to the grand public and remains shrouded in mistery :-o

had to learn on my own (T_T) . I hope Ive seen these Vids before :-p haha

My Scene Editor :-)

After the level is finished, comes the need to populate it with Items, enemies and smart Objects ;-)

Items are in fact very complex objects that are definied throught their ID (in other words they can go from being fruits to moving plateforms or any other thing very easily and with minimal code).

My Layers Editor :-)

This came a long way from the rudimentary version I had used for the first engine demo (Prehistoire By JAKAMY) :-)

Now It can created and manipulate layer size on the fly.

I can either edit one layer alone or load all the scene defined layers at once for real time impression of what I do :-p

the scene layers are defined as this starting from the top most layer (of course this is a developer preference and can be altered very easily :-) ):

2 "overall" plant layers, 2 after entities plant layers, grass layer, rock layer, pre mountain layer, mountain layer,sky layer. and of course the Data layer which is invisible.

A total of 10 layers (didn't counted prelayers, since they are mostly for rain, fog ... effects).

As I wrote the number of layers used is a developer choice since the engine can handle as much as you want (of course the hardware must cope with it too ;-) ).

Entity Editor:

This editor is for entities's animation extra data. Like Sprite boundaries (Body circling rectangle)

and like lethal areas (lethal red boxes on dangerous parts of the sprites like fangs and claws) which can be numerous and defined per animation or per frame.

of course debug mode shows all extra data rectangles in real time :-)

My Sprite animations Editor :-)

The Editors sprite's editon is in fact an animation data creator (frame per second, frames...) through the spritesheets I get on build time.

this video shows how to add a new animation to the SaberTooth. Which is much more quicker and incredibly easier than before I created the editors :-)

My Editor Mode :-)

Graphics are Ugly but very functional, after all its for developers only (for now ;-p ).

in creating my editors I choose to use my current Game engine to render it because I already made it flexible and multi purpose.

I needed then a menu like which I added as a three auto hide menus (plan to add a new bottom one later).

I needed too a system to read user's data through the keyboard (had to do my own key reading :-( [spacebar for example is reported in strings as 'SpaceBar'! ]) which I made as a multi question and answer reader.

and since I wanted everything to be mouse controlled I made It so that not only the cursor position is for the screen position but also at the same time when needed to be the loaded Inlayer position :-|

Tabula Rasa !

Tabula rasa (latin: blank slate):
When I discovered what was causing the demo to crash in french PCs(see older post), I smiled, not only because its a dumb visual studio bug, but also because I was already working on striping the file system and replacing it with an efficient (but no more human easy ;-p ) XML system in order to prepare the engine to the coming Editors.
putting in the XML system made me redo nearly all the loading calls from the ground to the managers, which was heavy :-| (a partial Tabula Rasa :-p ).
Still now that I already started working on the editors, I can't be less amazed at how little I have now to do( I don't even look inside the created data files anymore :-)) everything 'VISUAL' and automatic :-))) ).
I decided to ditch the idea of a windows editor( would have to code again layer displayers.................), in favor of an inEngine editor. However, I needed to create my own menus , buttons, questions answers popups....in short my own GUI! (Using it is fun ;-p ).
OF course its relatively 'Ugly' because its for me only not the players (maybe Ill make it prettier if I decide to create an 'editor' DLC after the full game release ).

I dedicated the Right menu (shows when mouse cursor is in extreme right)

to the already present layer editor and added many easy functions like increase layer rows, column...


.


a very simple multi question multi answer popup.
in addition to a visual report on errors like 'file not found' and a Process abord manager (for no more crashes or reloads :-) )







The Left menu is for the entities, I still added only 2 functions but It will be populated soon.









Like the creation of the collision rectangle with
the mouse :-)
(here I do 3 clicks per animation sequence 2 for rectangle and 1 for save datafile ;-p )
(It took me before at least 15mn per sequence calculating and trying the crop :-| ).





and This is the demo in DEBUG mode where I can spot bugs and errors visually.









The truth is there will be a Top and Bottom menus Ill be talking about in due time.
Right now I paused the Entities Editor development to do a complete overhaul of the Lethal areas system(add multi areas per seq and per sequence frames if needed) in order to create Better and Crazier Big Bosses like for example a giant Cracken for the full game :-))))
(hehe a mini Tabula Rasa again for the Lethal area system :-p ).


PS: 3 posts in a row, which are posts I redid because of the format

:-p

From 3Hours to 3minutes.

This is my first post for the second phase of my engine development :-)
The demo proved that the engine is mature enough to start creating a full game.
Still, many necessary redundant tasks took me a lot of valuable time.
Like: increasing the layer size, calculating its parallax scrolling values, creating animation's sequence data, editing per sequence crop rectangles and many many more.
hopefully I had already created a decent layer editor, but if it proved enough for a 1 level demo, it won't be for a full game :-| .

This is why since February I started the second main phase of my plan, which is to create mouse controlled editors for everything. This way Ill only need the Frames files to create in minutes what took me from several hours to days calculating :-))
This way I can finally go to the final phase ;-)