Hello all,

My friend Simon and I are working on a project which has hit very hard/rough times due to a gamble that didn't work out.

But it has given my mate and I a chance to look at the project, Take 2, basically start again and approach it differently this time.

One thing we aimed to do with the project from the start was to make editors within the game, so someone like me (an artist with no programming experience) can mess and add stuff to the game without the need for Simon (the programmer) to do anything. With this it also meant we had a quick turn-around between projects.

We tested this theory and got a working pipe-line down, which worked very well, but then we took our gamble which put pay to that.

So now needing to do much of the game again, Simon wants to try to make the tools much more flexible, with a view 'possibly' to releasing them as there own game development package in the longer term (I.e like Game maker, RPG maker etc etc),

Now what I want to know is, what features/tools/abilities would you like to see in an 'ideal' 2d level editor?

Cheers in advance for feedback.

John

What genre are you aiming for? 2D Platformer?

Our current project is a 2d top down space shooter, but in theory you could sue the editor (even as it stands) to create a platformer, oviously the coding would need some serious adjustment though.

Heres a linky to what we have so far:- http://www.moddb.com/games/invasion-games-series

Realistically I don't think we will get this to a flexable enough stage for a full public release until we oursleves have created 2 or 3 games with it ourseleves, bringing new elements to the table with each game.

Our next game for example we are thinking an RTS, which will really extend the behavior libaries across the board of the engine and editors.

- most of what i want are available on game maker.

there are a few addition though:

- grouping (so putting a swarm of enemy is easy)
- location data entry & nudge. just like a lot of modeller allow you to use keyboard entry, so is enemy / bonus placing, gui, etc.
- smart tile grouping. anyone who use starcraft map editor know this. although it's good to have a sidebar full of tile, you have this shortcut while modelling. let say you are putting a beach tile, and the previous tile is a starter (1/4 of a circle)
- freeform image placement, like non tile based 2d game nowdays, and vector collision system to go along with it (you draw a 2d vector as a collision boundary instead of the image itself).