Be my fan on FacebookFlash game level editor
- January 10, 2008 by Emanuele Feronato
- Filed under Flash, Game design | 15 Comments
All big game industries use game editors to design the levels of their games. Just think about games like Unreal Tournament 3… its maps are designed with a level editor. It would be impossible to design such accurate maps just inserting array values or XML tags or whatsoever.
We aren’t creating games like UT3, but even games with much simpler level design like Tileball needed a level editor to design the tracks.
I used a prototype made by OutsideOfSociety… and if you don’t know this name… it’s the guy that inspired Tony Pa‘s tutorials.
Unfortunately, OOS is not active for a long time, and I am afraid he won’t come back more than a couple of times in a year
So I decided to continue his project about Flash tile game editors.
Don’t let the name confuse you… with a tile map editor you can design a lot more than platform levels… as I said, Tileball was designed with an editor, and with the same editor you can design, for example, Bloons levels, or some tile-based Nitrome games, and so on.
The editor provided by OOS is very poor, but it’s a good start to design a complete one, with all features a modern editor must have.
This is the to-do list I plan to… ehm… do.
- Saving in progress levels in your hard disk
- Loading levels from your hard disk
- Exporting levels both as array and as XML files
- Creating virtually infinite maps with zoom and pan
- Managing virtually an infinite number of tiles
I’ll start coding it very soon. Do you have any other idea about the features the editor should have?
(10 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)
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I haven’t really looked at it yet but maybe add a thing so that you can enter buildings.
I’ve created 3D shooter levels for about 7 years and I’m currently working on a few 2D Flash games, so I think I know a bit about what a good editor needs.
It depends on how generic you want it to be, but I’ll just list some points sorted by importance:
- Undo/redo: easy undoing means less hesitation to add improvements.
- Easy scrolling around: see the big picture without too much hassle. Zooming, as you suggested, is neat, too. :)
- Good tileset overview: if finding a tile takes too long, you’ll make repetious levels more easily. An option to set the tile manager full-screen when searching through large tilesets can be usefull.
- Hotkeys for common actions: a power users friend :)
- Remembering used tilesets: no need to select a tileset at startup if you’ll load the same one every time, just allow the level-designer to add or remove a tileset from the list whenever he wants.
- Tile selection and copy-paste: many games contain repeating patterns, such as houses made up of several tiles. Easy duplication of these saves time.
- And perhaps some sort of game entity placement system, which is probably the most game-dependant thingy.
I hope these suggestions are usefull to you. Good luck, I’d certainly like to see the results. :)
Hi,
you can also look at Mappy editor.
Thanks to LUA scripts you can easily export in the desired format (there’s a native scripts to export in AS array format).
Its only problem is that there’s no real MAC OSX support yet.
Good luck
Thomas
look at the level editor sor smiley wars at http://www.smileys-war.com/mapeditor.html that is a great editor
Well, there is a very very good level editor in the making and they have a pretty stable beta out. Its from the guys at flash kit.
http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=749544&highlight=flashedit
I think a good flash editor should have all things that the game has. A run option. etc.
To make a level editor for circle chain, it is probably childs play.
Level editing for the played is extremely fun to do. But for beginner programmers like my self, when you are making a physics-based game like the sling tut or the racing game tut, it is very easy and simple to make a “God-Mode” where the player can change any variable he wants.
Example: Changing the force of gravity, or the speed of the ball
I find it very fun to mess around with online games.
Hi Emanuele.
I’ve made my own level editor (Where you can save and load) for a game I’m still working on, and the plan is to opload the created levels to some kind of database. It’s not my main priority at the moment but I know it will take alot time to make a script for that. So it would help me alot if you could cover that in your tutorial.
To make a level editor for circle chain, it is probably childs play.
why would you need a level editor for circle chain…. they are random.
how do u get level editor?
I can’t wait for you to do this!
I want to make a game for Bonus Level but I can’t seem to work out how to do a level editor.
there is a online flash game named seafight. i want to know how to edit ships and the pearl and the money. i am playing this game many years but i am still trying to find out the secrets of this game. if anyone know how to design ships in seafight please writ me or write here please.
my email adress is runcomekoma@hotmail.com
Hey would it be possible to make an editor for like dirk valentine or final ninja i dont see how that could work
Hi Emanuele – have you had any success building a flash editor?
http://personal.boristhebrave.com/project/box2dwith/?q=project/box2dwith
Boris the Brave has assembled some box2d resources that might help. You seem like a natural fit to make it happen. I for one would be enthusiastic to see what you would come up with!
great article………….