Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on
Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2023 8:24 pm
So, awhile back, when I decided to make a bunch of tools and stuff available for people building their own JRPG with Love and Lua, I realized I could take the scene/level designer I'd made for Magic Pixel, take it out, simplify it, and make an easy to use level/scene designer anyone can use. Now, it's still a WIP. The main things I need to add are file saving and loading (kind of important, narf), adding music to a level, and a few small tweaks to the images used. The idea? In the end, it will be an easy to extend, simple to use level designer you can use with your own games.
The idea is that it doesn't do things like collision and animation, that's up to you, since there are so many libraries that can do that already, and I didn't want anyone to be forced to use one. It just allows you to layout, place images as background, define objects and place them as well. You bring the stuff in with a simple load call, and it stores it in a table of layers and objects, easy to use in your game and manipulate as you want. That way you can use your own camera system etc.
Also, if you want to add stuff like lighting/etc or animations *during* the level editor itself, it's easy to extend. You just add your own update and draw function respectfully. That's it.
Unlike Green Tea (my old map editor from 2014 or so), or Magic Pixel, I'm not creating a complex plugin architecture, I'm not doing some weird object oriented stuff. I'm trying to keep it simple, straight forward, easy to use. Will this replace TileD? probably not. It might be used in conjunction with it.
Anyway, it's not ready for use just yet, but the code is on git hub here-
https://github.com/pauljessup/simpleSceneDesigner
You can change fonts and background colors, too for the UI. As well as do different screen resolutions/etc. It all should adjust scaling/etc in the background. Anyway, here's some screenshots of me messing around with it.
The images are going to change and be removed in the github file, just test images from elsewhere. Eventually I'll have a demo using open art and music, and I'll set up a wiki with all the functions/etc.
The main idea here, as with simpleLamp and simpleMenu, was to make a library of stuff that was easier to learn how to use than to code it from scratch. I find myself asking that about libraries all the time. Should I use this? How long will it take me to remember the functional calls? Will it be quicker just to code it?
I want this to have functionality that is easy to use, easy to remember, and something writing from scratch would take far longer than using as is. Anyway. It won't be a stand alone, I don't think, but others can use it to make a stand alone level editor of they wanted to. I don't want it to try and do everything for the dev, that's the downside to a lot of generic level editors that try and do everything anyone could want- they are complex to use and then implement. This does the bare minimum, and then allows you to customize it to fit in your game.
I picture this having save/load and adding music in less than a month. Then I'll set about creating documentation and examples.
Anyway, have some sceeenshots
The idea is that it doesn't do things like collision and animation, that's up to you, since there are so many libraries that can do that already, and I didn't want anyone to be forced to use one. It just allows you to layout, place images as background, define objects and place them as well. You bring the stuff in with a simple load call, and it stores it in a table of layers and objects, easy to use in your game and manipulate as you want. That way you can use your own camera system etc.
Also, if you want to add stuff like lighting/etc or animations *during* the level editor itself, it's easy to extend. You just add your own update and draw function respectfully. That's it.
Unlike Green Tea (my old map editor from 2014 or so), or Magic Pixel, I'm not creating a complex plugin architecture, I'm not doing some weird object oriented stuff. I'm trying to keep it simple, straight forward, easy to use. Will this replace TileD? probably not. It might be used in conjunction with it.
Anyway, it's not ready for use just yet, but the code is on git hub here-
https://github.com/pauljessup/simpleSceneDesigner
You can change fonts and background colors, too for the UI. As well as do different screen resolutions/etc. It all should adjust scaling/etc in the background. Anyway, here's some screenshots of me messing around with it.
The images are going to change and be removed in the github file, just test images from elsewhere. Eventually I'll have a demo using open art and music, and I'll set up a wiki with all the functions/etc.
The main idea here, as with simpleLamp and simpleMenu, was to make a library of stuff that was easier to learn how to use than to code it from scratch. I find myself asking that about libraries all the time. Should I use this? How long will it take me to remember the functional calls? Will it be quicker just to code it?
I want this to have functionality that is easy to use, easy to remember, and something writing from scratch would take far longer than using as is. Anyway. It won't be a stand alone, I don't think, but others can use it to make a stand alone level editor of they wanted to. I don't want it to try and do everything for the dev, that's the downside to a lot of generic level editors that try and do everything anyone could want- they are complex to use and then implement. This does the bare minimum, and then allows you to customize it to fit in your game.
I picture this having save/load and adding music in less than a month. Then I'll set about creating documentation and examples.
Anyway, have some sceeenshots
- Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.20 PM.png (287.59 KiB) Viewed 13360 times
- Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.42 PM.png (288.14 KiB) Viewed 13360 times
- Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.51 PM.png (316.23 KiB) Viewed 13360 times