Level Builder Suggestions

#1 Thanks a bunch for posting this matt, it will be really nice to get a bunch of thoughts together in one thread!

-Justin

#2 Well, to start, it's a really cool thing. I'm sorry I won't be able to use it on my current project due to time constraints, but it certainly has the potential to make future games easier.

One thing that might be nice is something akin to "brushes" like in the tile editor. Wherein now I have to define each enemy individually every time I want to place one, some kind of a pallete where I could store pre-configured enemies and whatnot would be really handy.

#3 Maybe I'm not alone in this, but a suggestion I have is that there needs to be alittle more documentation on this tool. I'm sure it's a powerful and useful tool, but I haven't taken the time to just open it up and 'figure it out'. If there were a document that would detail what this tool is intended to do, what it can do, and how it can save me time instead of doing things 'the hard way' then I would make it more of a priority to learn the new tool at which point I could possibly add suggestions on ways to make it better!

#4 Honestly, after learning early on how to do most "level building" in code, for very basic things it almost seems like the level editor is a bit too much. For example, the scenegraph plus 9 static sprites creates almost 600 lines of code, with most of the parameters left at defaults as I had no need to add physics or collisions to those background objects. It would be cool if there was a way to only have the bare basic options for sprites, for example, then drag and drop in stuff like physics and mounting when needed. Might also help newcomers not feel overwhelmed at seeing near 70 different parameter options for a sprite (which is no doubt a great thing in the end for intermediate/advanced users, I guess it's more in the presentation of it).

#5 Unlimited Undo and Redo buttons ;D

#6 @Mike: I agree with this idea. One thing that might work well is to only generate code for values that have been defined in the property editor. If you don't set physics and collision information, don't put that in the file.

#7 I would have to also agree with Mike. Once I waded through making some sprites I could actually see in the default 'test' view I opened the .lev file in an editor and promptly went back to doing things by hand.

For now, since I'm still implementing functionality, doing it the hard way is ok; but later on I would love to have an easy to use and efficient level editor as the amount of unique content I need to generate is quite high.

I'm willing to say that it wasn't too terribly hard to figure out the basics with a couple of hours on 2 different occasions, so perhaps a good tutorial would be on how to implement it with existing projects.

- Don