I’ve been slowly working in a project for computer and console devices, a puzzle-action game based on a prototype I made for Ludum Dare back in 2013. The idea evolved quite a bit and I’m focused now on more puzzles and action, the idea actually changed a lot but the base is still the same.
Since last year I’ve been writing code for physics, gameplay, etc using OpenFL for this projects and after a while I decided to start working with Unity (I want to release the game for consoles as well and it seemed easier). The game involves big levels now and a lot of level creation, so I wanted to use a tool to create levels easy and simple, this really saves a lot of time when testing and changing features.
Inkscape
First I decided to use Inkscape as a level editor, the tool itself is very good and combined with its possibility of generating XML code from the elements you add to the document (graphically) it’s very handy. I wrote a small parser on Haxe for a small prototype I created last year, also used in the first version of this new project I’m currently working on.
It really worked very well when I was using OpenFL. After deciding to work with Unity, I also tried to do the same thing because I wanted to keep the levels separated from the game engine and also Inkscape itself runs faster and better when I’m focused on creating only levels. I wrote a parser in C# of the XML code that Inkscape generates and it worked well too.
Generally speaking, Inkscape is a really good tool for creating levels, it is lightweight and very flexible. Inkscape was also doing the basic functionality I needed from the editor but there was still work to do to really make it good enough for this project.
Unity and Custom editors
Since I’m still in the process of learning about Unity and all its features, I didn’t know you could customize the editor and include custom scripts to minimize the efforts when doing cumbersome or repetitive tasks.
This week while reviewing some code, I found out that you can actually create your own menus and customize a lot of things. So I decided to play a little bit with that and try to create a very small tile editor for this game.
After struggling a bit about understanding how to make everything work, I was able to put together the most basic functionality for the tile editor I wanted: adding tiles as fast as possible, having a grid that snapped tiles automatically to it, removing and moving tiles.
Having this functionality inside the editor while creating levels and the possibility of adding more stuff like rotation, layering, etc is really a great advantage if you want to save time and avoid doing repetitive tasks. I will keep improving what I have so far, keep posting about it and share it when it’s in a decent state for people to play with it.
Closing
Before writing this post I thought about detailed explaining how to write a parser for Inkscape and how to create a custom editor for Unity, however, I’m not really sure if it’s worth it. A lot of people have done this before and probably they explain it better than me.
If someone wants to know details about what I did, I’ll definitely explain everything step by step, meanwhile, you can check out the following links that helped me a lot understanding how to both processes work.
Once I clean up the code for the Unity editor I wrote and the Inkscape parser, I’ll upload them to my repository in Github.
Ah, in addition to the new project, Fiery Squirrel is also focused on this new mobile game: Kuon’s Saga, I’ll talk more about it soon!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.