Infiltrator Part 36 - Editor Improvements

This short session was dedicated mainly to improving the level editor. After all, once I finish most of the core mechanics, I will be spending a lot of time using it to create the content. Additionally, I'm hoping to release the game with level editor enabled the way it is now. (as a command line option) That way users will get to play around with creating their own levels and all that good stuff. The upshot is that a lot of other people could also potentially be spending a lot of time using this level editor, and I want to make that as painless as reasonably possible.

Rotation!

Once I finished setting up the options menu, I turned my attentions to the addition of extra features for the level editor. I added the ability to change the rotation of objects you place(except the player) using the left and right arrow keys. The alternative is to force the level designer to 1) design levels with walls only rotated at boring 90 degree angles or 2) use big sets of really small walls to make seemingly diagonal walls. Neither of these options were appealing, and that meant modding the level parsing code to read in rotated objects. That was actually pretty easy, as was setting up the level file generating code to include object rotations, as was adding the ability to set that rotation for each individual object in the editor. Put all those things together, and you have a new cool feature that was easy to add but time consuming.

It's true that rotation should have been available from the get-go, but at the time I was rushing to get the basic framework for as many different modules as possible together quickly. Now I am returning to the level editor to add much needed feature like the ability to change the level background, zoom in and out, show and hide different editing menu's, control rotation precision, and more. That's more like what's going on than what's done though.

I have to admit that this is probably the longest streak of Infiltrator posts I've had in awhile. This blog seems to have become less "LazerBlade ranting and rambling about videogames and art" and more "LazerBlade journalling the projects that take up all his time." I'll try to rustle up some other interesting topics to write about for next time.

    --LazerBlade