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Okay, since the level editor is now mature enough to give out a preliminary release, here we go.
Download it here
New Link
Simple .NET 3.5 (no WPF) exe, messy VB.NET source code available on request. Supports Tiledef, Tile animation, Sprite, and level tilemap editing. You can also import and publish level graphics and music.
So, there's no in-editor documentation, so here goes.
The file menu is fairly self-explanatory. There is no "Close File" button, but you can open a new or existing level to close the one you currently have open. Saving is glitchy, sometimes it will throw and error and not save, some error about the file already existing. If you used ctrl-S, try clicking the menu item itself. If you clicked the menu item, just wait a bit then try again (5-10 seconds).
From the Level menu you can change Tiledef entries or add new ones (new levels start out with two predefined entries which can be changed), add, remove, or reorder tile animations (More on reordering in later build documentation). From the Resources submenu, you can choose to import a tileset graphics file (32bpp PNG), Intro music, or Music loop (Generally these are used as two parts of a single song). When the level loads, the Intro music begins playing. After the intro finishes, the loop section immediately begins, and will loop instantaneously when it finishes playing.
Editing the tilemaps is particularly easy - it has been described as the MS Paint of level editors (for being easy to pick up). Select a tile either from the drop-down box, or the tile palette below it. The palette is the only way to select most tiles when you have over ~14 tiles. Hover your mouse over the top and bottom rows of the palette to scroll it up and down. Left or right click on a tile in the palette to select it.
The "Paint", "Fill", and "Select" radiobuttons determine how you interact with the level window. In paint mode, clicking and/or dragging on the canvas will paint the currently selected tile to it Fill mode operates also as you would expect, but does not accept click-and-drag as a command, you must click every time you wish to use the Fill command.
Select simply selects the currently-highlighted tile, much as if you had clicked it in the tile palette. Right-clicking at any time in the canvas window will also Select a tile, regardless of the mode you have selected.
Above the tile selectors, there is a set of five buttons and radiobuttons, with one button and radiobutton segregated from the group. Ignore this segregated pair, currently it is effectively useless until the next update.
The buttons 1, 2, 3, and 4 control visibility of the four tilemap layers. In the current release, sprites will interact with layer 1, while layers 2 through 4 are for decoration (This will change in later updates). Note that with no current way of adding sprites, and no sprites defined, this point is moot.
The radiobuttons below these four buttons control which layer you are "editing." Just because a layer is not shown, does not mean you can't alter it. As well, the paint/fill/select mode only acts on the "active" layer, the other three layers are effectively ignored.
Use the Arrow keys to scroll the canvas around. The canvas can be resized from Level->Header Info. Note that a canvas size of less than 21 tiles wide and 16 tiles high cannot be loaded in the engine, which means you must resize upwards at least once after creating a new level!
The tiledef editor lets you create and modify (but not delete) Tiledefs. These are the "tiles" available for you to use to create your levels. On the right is the tilemap available for you, which can be updated by importing a new graphics file (Level->Resources->Import Graphics File in the main window). This image stretches to fit the window, and resizing the window can expand or shrink the image. Clicking in this image selects a 32x32px square to use as the graphics for the tile currently being modified. These tiles are grid-aligned to the upper-left corner of the image.
The tile palette in the tiledef editor works similarly to the main windows', but is used to select the tile to be edited. Creating a new tile automatically selects it.
The checkbox array on the left controls the tile flags. Hover you mouse over a checkbox to get more information about the effect it has on the tile.
The Tile Animation editor is fairly simple to use. Once you create an animation ("Add New" button), click a tile on the palette to use as the target tile. Clicking on the large tileset to the right of the tile palette picks the starting tile used in the animation. Frame Count is how many frames are in the animation. Frame divisor determines how many in-game frames elapse before the animation progresses one frame. Higher values are slower, and 60 is approximately 1 second, where 1 is 60 times a second. NOTE THAT THE EDITOR DOES NOT SHOW TILE ANIMATIONS OUTSIDE OF THIS DIALOG. Move Up/Down and the Start Enabled checkbox are irrelevant at this point, however they do work- note that you cannot disable/enable animations at run-time yet. The animation editor also shows a small preview of the tile animation.
Export to Engine is the last major feature of the editor you guys will want to be familiar with. When you select it and give it a number between 0 and 65535 inclusive at the popup, it'll output a folder structure you can immediately drag and drop into Data.zip in the engine. By saving it as level 1 and overwriting what's currently in the zip, you can also view part of your levels in the engine itself.
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