Level editor

Hi people!

A level editor has been talked about before. It's not a top priority since it aparently works without one, but it would speed things up hugely, be loved by everyone, and place you yet another step ahead of your rivals. Making levels is actually when you build your game world, it's a huge part of making games, (especially exploration games which has become a pretty big genre). The perfect game creator would of course be great for level design, so it feels like a natural step for C2 to take.

I suggest the following solution. Pressing the "level edit" button gives you the level in full screen, eccept on one side where you have:

-the objects panel to pick objects and place into the layout.

-A tool bar with basic tools. For example a pencil that you use by picking a sprite and draw on a grid. Option to replace existing sprites or layer them etc. If you don't use a grid you just klick in sprites, right klick to delete (or something like that).

-A minimap, where you can click to navigate to different parts of the level. Everyone working with big levels in construct would agree with this. Right now you either have to zoom in and out wich often fails and you end up 500% zoomed in some corner, or space+drag like 50 times.

I'm looking forward to working with this!

Hi people!

A level editor has been talked about before. It's not a top priority since it aparently works without one, but it would speed things up hugely, be loved by everyone, and place you yet another step ahead of your rivals. Making levels is actually when you build your game world, it's a huge part of making games, (especially exploration games which has become a pretty big genre). The perfect game creator would of course be great for level design, so it feels like a natural step for C2 to take.

I suggest the following solution. Pressing the "level edit" button gives you the level in full screen, eccept on one side where you have:

-the objects panel to pick objects and place into the layout.

-A tool bar with basic tools. For example a pencil that you use by picking a sprite and draw on a grid. Option to replace existing sprites or layer them etc. If you don't use a grid you just klick in sprites, right klick to delete (or something like that).

-A minimap, where you can click to navigate to different parts of the level. Everyone working with big levels in construct would agree with this. Right now you either have to zoom in and out wich often fails and you end up 500% zoomed in some corner, or space+drag like 50 times.

I'm looking forward to working with this!

I was thinking about this last night! telepathy!

now I would add autotileset to go with it. That would help a lot too especialy in grid based designs. How they would work? croping in the right places simple 3gridsX3grids based texture with the main texture in the center grid and border textures around it. More or less like this one ( except this one is using more grids for diferent types of corners)

<img src="http://www.rmxpresource.co.uk/resources/rmxp/autotiles/054-Wall02b.png">

So people vote for this as this will speed up the lvl building by 300%. no joke.

True every one will probably want a level editor, but not everyone will want the same things.

What would be best is some sort of api so there can be many different "flavors".

True every one will probably want a level editor, but not everyone will want the same things.

What would be best is some sort of api so there can be many different "flavors".

Yeah, thought that deppends. I don't think lvl editor would be needed for one screen games but more for platform or rpg games. However what do you excacly mean by flavors?

edit@ at least there should be a number of brushes to literaly draw the maps if not advanced editor:)

Flavors as in different editors to choose. Basically they should be in plugs like exporters.

Iso, hex, topdown, sideview, etc, just to many to list.

i agree with level editor

I think I remember TGF having a decent editor, you could click on a sprite in the object list then right click in the layout to place an instance of an object, rather than dragging 1 object at a time or control + dragging to make copies.

Construct can do that to, but with enter instead of right-klick. Not that big difference (eccept if you use a laptop like me, then you have to cross your arms.)

You know, we could just add a Tile Map plugin that allows you to import tile maps from Tiled...

... Wait a minute. The HTML5 exporter uses Javascript. Why is there not a Tiled plugin for C2 yet?! This needs to be rectified. Immediately.

A tilemap plug-in would be wonderful, for both Constructs

Yeah, Tile-set support for the level editor would be great, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Just some basic tools to build maps would be a great improvement. Not everyone would benefit from or use tilesets, or genre-specialized editors. But everyone needs to place sprites in the level somehow, so basic tools for that is top priority.

A good level editor imo opinion would be : You have at least three tools : Hand, Pencil and Eraser. To handle the tile part a new plugin would be created example : Tilemap, or Spritemap that is derived from sprite, but with the ability to draw only a part of it. You then could select the part from the tilemap and draw with Pencil, erase with Eraser and move with Hand. (erase with right mouse would be good too). This drawing would be snapped to a grid or free. This could be even better if the Pencil and Eraser would serve for drawing Sprites too. So it's a hybrid system , tile based and free positioning based like it is now. It's only a rough idea but could work. And it would not require a complete rewrite of the current system but would be an extension of it

I sent a PM to Ash about the feasibility of an official tile map plugin, but he never replied, and I think it was probably a bad idea to PM him about that anyway.

This is what I wrote in the PM:

hough such requests have been raised multiple times, I haven't really seen you comment on it, so I might as well chat with you about it directly, if it's not too much trouble.

Tile maps are common in 2D games for fairly obvious reasons. In C2, as you've previously established, Tiled Backgrounds are more suited in most cases for level design as they're optimized to be spread out and used in large numbers. However, the problem with this, is that Tiled Backgrounds most likely won't use fine collisions like sprites will, and they can't be animated. Right now, the way it works now is perfectly fine for games with level layouts like Braid.

And hell, a Sprite/Tiled Background mix for games with more traditional 'tile' layouts can be done, since there's now a snap-to-grid, but... A common complaint is that making levels from the 'tiles' is time-consuming, even with snap-to-grid and copy-paste. Tiled Backgrounds are also highly unsuitable for non-square tiles, such as isometric tiles.

Which is why people have been asking for tile-maps, and being able to 'paint' them. Tile Maps can possibly have the same advantages as Tiled Backgrounds, with the added bonuses of being able to change the Tile-Map at runtime (destroying tiles, or replacing them with others, or adding new tiles), giving tiles certain behaviors (like Solid and Platform), assigning tiles to families for additional functionality, and perhaps having animations and fine collisions (among other things that don't come to mind, right now). It would also improve the workflow of level designers going for a tile-map style of level design. It's obviously not a replacement for Tiled Backgrounds (since Tiled Backgrounds on their own are more suitable for certain other things), however.

As a starting point, one could just be able to import tilemaps made from Tiled, which is a great program with various features, and it's proven to be able to be perfectly workable with Javascript and HTML5. I'm just saying, a Tile Map plugin could prove to be of much benefit over the long term, and improve C2 considerably.

Now, the question is, if and when do you see a Tile Map plugin being implemented in C2?

I really, honestly think a tile map plugin would do wonders for Construct 2.

Yeah, sorry, I read the PM. I never got round to replying just because we're knee deep in work, endless todo lists, etc. You're basically right though, tile maps are important and we need to do them.

Ah, awesome, so you're saying it WILL happen at some point? That's a massive relief.