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[AndyCee]

I'm just putting out some thoughts for what people want or are willing to support for useful tools to aid game making. And maybe do a kickstarter similar to this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/539087245/spriter/description

But I'll wind back a bit and explain what I have been doing in the past few months. Essentially my main goal is to build some very good editors for building 2D games with and to use these tools to build games very quickly with. When I researched into all this, especially 2D map editors, I soon realised that none of the available tools were not really suitable for what I wanted. So I decided to roll my own because I'm one of those programmers that hates Unity with a passion (just bloatware as far as I'm concerned and the framerate on low end mobile devices is pretty bad), plus I enjoy building my own graphic engines and have a pretty good 2D engine core. Because of all that I want to build very good tools around my cross platform engine which will allow realtime editing and building the asset packages that my games will use.

Now this is where things go nuts with my plans of knocking out quick games. I've been getting more and more into just building the tools to the extent of been anal with them. What I mean by this is I decided to program the tools in C++ using just only the windows API because my core engine is written in C++. I'm doing this because I want to edit and run in real time without breaking the flow of game design.

So been anal about all this I decided I would program a windows docking system that would work and behave well with a multiple monitor setup. And things just snowballed from there to a point where the tools will look pretty professional.

So my plan for these tools is to build them so that they can all be run from the same application. At the moment I'm working on a map editor but have plans for things like animation editors, and so forth. Eventually I want to add a scripting language to all this - I can see all this ending up as something like Game Maker.

Anyway, my questions are, what tools do people actually want? So far I'm working on a 2D map editor, would people find that useful? Would having a comprehensive suite of tools be useful in the same application? Would anybody support a kickstarter for professional tools?

Thanks for anybodies time

[agersant]

So far I'm working on a 2D map editor, would people find that useful?
^ I've used [Tiled](http://www.mapeditor.org/) for several years and you would need really unique and compelling features to make me switch.

Would having a comprehensive suite of tools be useful in the same application?
^ I don't think that's a great idea either. People who are looking for an "integrated" or batteries-included solution naturally gravitate towards Unity/Unreal or other popular engines. If you don't want to be fighting these giants, it would be wiser to design individual tools which people can use in their existing workflow (and possibly in combination with a mainstream engine package). Good examples of this would be Spriter, Tiled, Sprite Lamp or BMFont.

Would anybody support a kickstarter for professional tools?
^ Yes, if I have a use for said tool.

[valrus]

One thing I don't enjoy is flipping in between a pixel art program, a tilemap editor, and procgen rules.  (Even when the level itself is static, I use them for autotiling, for some variation in repetitive backgrounds, etc.)

What I'd enjoy using is something that simultaneously lets me do pixel art and tiling (which is a no-brainer, with them being conceptually so similar), but also lets me script and test some "fill rules" to be executed at map generation.  So that I can, for example, either fill a tile with tile WALL_N, or assign that tile to a simple function that randomly chooses between WALL_N, WALL_N_VINES, or WALL_N_CRUMBLED, or chooses its tile based on neighboring tiles, cellular-automaton style.  Or that I can drag the cursor to choose an area, and assign that area to a more complex function that procgens an interior room. 

These functions can be pretty limited -- they don't need to be written in a fully Turing-complete language -- but the killer feature I really want is the ability to immediately execute them within the tile editor itself just by hitting F<something>, so that I can see what they're going to do.  (And switch right to the pixel editor when I find that it's come up with a configuration I didn't expect and I need to make an additional tile to fit in.)  That's handy even when you're making a static map -- to be able to specify exactly a fill function, execute it, and then say "Ok, replace the function with its results" like you can in Excel.

That's probably the right metaphor for it: a tilemap Excel.  The power of a spreadsheet is that you can either fill in cells by hand, or associate cells with functions.  That's a good simplicity-and-power combo that I'd like to see in a tilemap editor.

[AndyCee]

Would having a comprehensive suite of tools be useful in the same application?
^ I don't think that's a great idea either. People who are looking for an "integrated" or batteries-included solution naturally gravitate towards Unity/Unreal or other popular engines. If you don't want to be fighting these giants, it would be wiser to design individual tools which people can use in their existing workflow (and possibly in combination with a mainstream engine package). Good examples of this would be Spriter, Tiled, Sprite Lamp or BMFont.

For my own engine core I would probably have a suite of tools but there's no reason why they cannot be separated out as single applications. For me this would be easy to do because each part of the editors will be separate from one other but they will also work well together in unison. So yes individual tools are possible.

[AndyCee]

One thing I don't enjoy is flipping in between a pixel art program, a tilemap editor, and procgen rules.  (Even when the level itself is static, I use them for autotiling, for some variation in repetitive backgrounds, etc.)

What I'd enjoy using is something that simultaneously lets me do pixel art and tiling (which is a no-brainer, with them being conceptually so similar), but also lets me script and test some "fill rules" to be executed at map generation.  So that I can, for example, either fill a tile with tile WALL_N, or assign that tile to a simple function that randomly chooses between WALL_N, WALL_N_VINES, or WALL_N_CRUMBLED, or chooses its tile based on neighboring tiles, cellular-automaton style.  Or that I can drag the cursor to choose an area, and assign that area to a more complex function that procgens an interior room. 

These functions can be pretty limited -- they don't need to be written in a fully Turing-complete language -- but the killer feature I really want is the ability to immediately execute them within the tile editor itself just by hitting F<something>, so that I can see what they're going to do.  (And switch right to the pixel editor when I find that it's come up with a configuration I didn't expect and I need to make an additional tile to fit in.)  That's handy even when you're making a static map -- to be able to specify exactly a fill function, execute it, and then say "Ok, replace the function with its results" like you can in Excel.

That's probably the right metaphor for it: a tilemap Excel.  The power of a spreadsheet is that you can either fill in cells by hand, or associate cells with functions.  That's a good simplicity-and-power combo that I'd like to see in a tilemap editor.

I do have plans for auto generated tile placement… What I don't want to do is a pixel editor because there are really good art applications already out there. If I added pixel editing it would be a pretty simple affair - not sure if that would be useful for people.

But then maybe if you had a comprehensive tile and pixel editor rolled into one then would that be the killer feature that people would go for.

Would people be interested in an editor like that? If there is then I would probably make it have good pixel art tools as well.

The map editor will be able to handle all the modern features like normal map generation and such for lighting effects as well as the usual stuff - I intend to make it the definite map editor.

[valrus]

I think there are at least a few that integrate both pixel editing and tile editing.  GameMaker seems to, but I've always bounced off their interface.  Pyxel does, but I haven't sprung for it.  Maybe once it's done.

So the combination of those two wouldn't be a killer feature on its own.

[diegzumillo]

OH OH OH OH!! I GOT ONE!

I want a palette editor that creates ramps automatically. Actually, it's pretty much what Hexels 2 does.

[AndyCee]

It's a pretty hard one to think of making a unique useful tool that people would switch to… a lot of people get stuck in their ways with editors because once they find one that is useful they tend to stick with it. The best I can do is make one that is useful for me then get some public feedback on it to see what features people would want. Once a list of potential features are there then that would be a good basis to consider a kickstarter.

[Evilperson]

A tool that lets me edit the code of my game while running it. It would save me so much time! I'm not a 'big programmer person' so maybe that already exists.
But yeah, If you'd make GameMaker but with that, I'd certainly switch, support the Kickstarter and all the things.

[sonder]

A tool that lets me edit the code of my game while running it. It would save me so much time! I'm not a 'big programmer person' so maybe that already exists.
But yeah, If you'd make GameMaker but with that, I'd certainly switch, support the Kickstarter and all the things.

Unity does this AFAIK

[fab]

I like using the GameMaker Language a lot. But it would be better if it had code hinting and every page could have it's own tab.

A map editor while the game is running would be good. I like how you can change the values while the game is running in Unity too.

I basically just want a better version of GameMaker but not all the 3D crap from Unity.

[bdsowers]

But I'll wind back a bit and explain what I have been doing in the past few months. Essentially my main goal is to build some very good editors for building 2D games with and to use these tools to build games very quickly with. When I researched into all this, especially 2D map editors, I soon realised that none of the available tools were not really suitable for what I wanted.

I guess the question is, what do you want that's not already available? And is that what other people want?

The market for tile map editors is locked down pretty hard by Tiled, DAME, and a few other ones, and engine-specific ones. But to my knowledge, there aren't a lot of good 2D map editors for non-tile maps. The Game Maker offering is... pretty underwhelming. And the Unity & Unreal editors are a little clunky for 2D games. I could see a good tool in that realm being pretty useful.

An animation tool would be handy. GM's animation tool is... does it even have one worth talking about? I don't mean a Spriter/Spine equivalent, as (a) that's a huge undertaking, and (b) those two tools are already pretty darn good. Probably closer to what Unity has in its animation editor.

[zilluss]

A tool that lets me edit the code of my game while running it. It would save me so much time! I'm not a 'big programmer person' so maybe that already exists.

As it's been said Unity does it but I found myself restarting the game every now and then because of some quirk. I read an article that said notch uses hot code swap to change code during runtime. A feature which most Java IDEs support, granted you develop on the JVM.
Besides I'm working on a similar feature for my own game. I already have code reloading but it restarts the current level. My next step is to watch the script files and notify the game that the scripts have changed and reload them during runtime. I also plan to reload assets, so I don't need to recompile to test how assets look in the running game. The reason I want this feature is because I develop on mobile and on device testing is crucial. Unity has some kind of emulator but it's really lame. But it won't be a visual editor because I'm very much a code person.

[oahda]

A tool that lets me edit the code of my game while running it. It would save me so much time! I'm not a 'big programmer person' so maybe that already exists.
But yeah, If you'd make GameMaker but with that, I'd certainly switch, support the Kickstarter and all the things.

Unity does this AFAIK

In theory, but I feel like it always dies in a pool of errors every time I do that (the changes to the code are fine and themselves error free — I mean it just gets confused and loses track of variables or something). Modifying variables in the inspector during runtime does work fine, however.