next »

[bengrue]

Hey all,

I was wondering what tools you guys preferred when making 2d map resources.  I've run through a few (Mappy, Tiled) briefly while trying to scope something for a one-off project I just started, but Mappy didn't seem to be easy to write loaders/savers for, and Tiled seemed really, really unresponsive.

Anyways, I'm looking for options and/or opinions on why I'm wrong about the above two.

(Also: hi!)

[muku]

I haven't used any of these, but you might also want to try Tile Studio if you haven't so far.

[Ragzouken]

I guess I've never really done anything substantial, but usually I'd just write my own editor based off of the map rendering code of the game. I suppose using a third party editor will save a lot of work though, if it's got good documentation on how to load maps in-game. I've never tried Mappy or Tiled.

[lordmetroid]

My own, it happens pretty automaticly, the map editor isn't much more than the engine going to be used in game with some additional layers of editing and saving capabilities.

[Bad Sector]

During the last two-or-three-ormaybe-four years, i made Slashstone Mapas a tile editor. Of course it didn't took me FOUR (or three or maybe two) years to make, i just only add functionality now and then (with multimonthly gaps between).

In any case it loads and saves maps in a text based tree format, similar to XML but using curly braces instead of <foo></foo> (its somewhat similar to what the Quake engines use). You'll find loaders in C/C++ and Java for the format in the site (but writing a custom parser is easy too). Personally i never use that format in a game though, i write a tool that parses the file and produces a binary file with the map(s) with only the information i need.

Note that the program is not available in binary form because i'm lazy. You need to build it yourself.

[moi]

Someone should make a tile editor where you can edit a menu or an ini file in order to set up the way the data is saved.
The problem with map editors is that each one of them saves in its own format, and generally every game engine uses its own format (in my own game engine, I change the format between games).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I create level editors for my games, I don't use third-party ones, I imagine it's less flexible to do that, although it might be intersting to look at them to get ideas for what to add to mine.

[bengrue]

While I generally endorse the "build your mapeditor in" deal where applicable, sometimes it's just not viable.

In this specific example I'd hate to edit levels on an iPhone. 

But as a seperate example it'd be tremendously annoying to edit resources in a complicated many-layered game with various layer parallaxes and the such.  At that point you'd be investing a lot of time into UI infrastructure for your custom editor, and that's something I'd like to avoid.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

In my experience the time is worth it. Even if it takes a month or two alone to create the editor, it'll save time in the long run.

Besides, the UI can be very, very basic. Here are some pictures for the level editors I've created for my last two games:

http://pics.livejournal.com/rinku/pic/000shs5k
http://pics.livejournal.com/rinku/pic/000sg9qg

Very very basic IU, but they saved and are saving me a lot of time. And they're potentially nice features for players to make custom levels with too.

[Alec]

Is there a target release date for "Saturated" yet? 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

It's been pushed forward a few times so I'm not sure how reliable it is. Currently it's "sometime in 2009"

The music, basic engine, and overall design are virtually done, but the graphics resources, writing, creature behavior programming, and maps are still only about 5%-15% done each.

[Farbs]

I guess it's all down to what kind of game you want to make.
If you're planning to churn out a lot of levels then a good editor is important, but if you're just using a few levels to show your ideas then it might be better not to bother.

In ROM CHECK FAIL I used a single text file for all my level data. It looks a bit like a nethack screenshot
Pro: Can use standard text editors like notepad, dead easy to import into engine, cost almost no development time
Con: Not much fun to edit

For Polychromatic Funk Monkey I used a combination of hardcoding in the game source (for the starting zone) and a variety of automatic level generation processes.
Pro: Zero implementation time, some replayability (which is okay for players, but brilliant for keeping playtesting interesting)
Con: Again, not much fun to edit. Also the automatically generated area could occasionally be unsolvable or un-fun, and eventually feels samey.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I agree with that. If you're making less than 10 levels or so it's probably better to hard-code them, it'd save time -- I did that for the smaller games I've made. So my advice to make a level editor specific to each game only really applies to large projects.

It also probably varies by genre -- a level editor wouldn't make much sense in a fighting game (although a character editor might).

[jonny]

I've always created my own tools, however I don't have a very good track for finishing projects and that's usually because I'm pretty stubborn about reinventing as many wheels as I can, even if they end up being rather square wheels.

[Craig Stern]

I've started making my own map editors as well, though you don't really have much choice about it if you work in Flash like I do.

[Bad Sector]

I use Mapas for Flash too :-).
But i convert the maps to another format (actually i convert them to integer arrays which i include in the source code).