Level Editor, Maybe?
I’m looking to make Spherack Reloaded as “Reloaded” as I can possibly make it, which is why I’m still working on basic features and haven’t even began planning out the code for game modes… just the concepts.
Something lately that’s been on my mind is level design. With the games physics engine and the fact you’re a much bigger-sized character as opposed to Spherack 2, levels need to be bigger and we have to work out methods of designing levels that we can actually use. The current map I have made so far took me about an hour to build in GM’s editor and sucks.
So what if I as well as users could have the ability to take a program had a much more creative, easier and fun-to-use way of choosing the maps we’d play on? We’d do this by introducing a level editing package, but not just any level editor. This won’t be using plain sprites as our old S2 levels did, instead users would be able to draw lines and polygons onto a screen as they please. Then when they finish, it’ll save their work to a file which the game engine would understand and there you go! A fully functional level. Whatever you think is good for a level, you can now make into a level.
Marbs, my old development partner whom I developed “Racer Online” with and who also did some small work on the Spherack 2 engine, was once experimenting with making a level editor as I described once. I have the source to it but it’s rather unfinished and I’m not fully sure how it works due to lack of commenting and also what is done barely works to begin with.
This is how it looks though:
Like it? Of course you do. I dropped him an e-mail tonight talking about the new Spherack and asking if he’d be interested in returning to the PCS crew to work on it with me. He’s return would be a great benefit to Reloaded, by giving us a functional level editor which will completely change the game for the better.
Tags: Development Blog, maps, Spherack Reloaded