Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Showcase your libraries, tools and other projects that help your fellow love users.
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

So, awhile back, when I decided to make a bunch of tools and stuff available for people building their own JRPG with Love and Lua, I realized I could take the scene/level designer I'd made for Magic Pixel, take it out, simplify it, and make an easy to use level/scene designer anyone can use. Now, it's still a WIP. The main things I need to add are file saving and loading (kind of important, narf), adding music to a level, and a few small tweaks to the images used. The idea? In the end, it will be an easy to extend, simple to use level designer you can use with your own games.

The idea is that it doesn't do things like collision and animation, that's up to you, since there are so many libraries that can do that already, and I didn't want anyone to be forced to use one. It just allows you to layout, place images as background, define objects and place them as well. You bring the stuff in with a simple load call, and it stores it in a table of layers and objects, easy to use in your game and manipulate as you want. That way you can use your own camera system etc.

Also, if you want to add stuff like lighting/etc or animations *during* the level editor itself, it's easy to extend. You just add your own update and draw function respectfully. That's it.

Unlike Green Tea (my old map editor from 2014 or so), or Magic Pixel, I'm not creating a complex plugin architecture, I'm not doing some weird object oriented stuff. I'm trying to keep it simple, straight forward, easy to use. Will this replace TileD? probably not. It might be used in conjunction with it.

Anyway, it's not ready for use just yet, but the code is on git hub here-
https://github.com/pauljessup/simpleSceneDesigner

You can change fonts and background colors, too for the UI. As well as do different screen resolutions/etc. It all should adjust scaling/etc in the background. Anyway, here's some screenshots of me messing around with it.

The images are going to change and be removed in the github file, just test images from elsewhere. Eventually I'll have a demo using open art and music, and I'll set up a wiki with all the functions/etc.

The main idea here, as with simpleLamp and simpleMenu, was to make a library of stuff that was easier to learn how to use than to code it from scratch. I find myself asking that about libraries all the time. Should I use this? How long will it take me to remember the functional calls? Will it be quicker just to code it?

I want this to have functionality that is easy to use, easy to remember, and something writing from scratch would take far longer than using as is. Anyway. It won't be a stand alone, I don't think, but others can use it to make a stand alone level editor of they wanted to. I don't want it to try and do everything for the dev, that's the downside to a lot of generic level editors that try and do everything anyone could want- they are complex to use and then implement. This does the bare minimum, and then allows you to customize it to fit in your game.

I picture this having save/load and adding music in less than a month. Then I'll set about creating documentation and examples.

Anyway, have some sceeenshots
Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.20 PM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.20 PM.png (287.59 KiB) Viewed 9834 times
Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.42 PM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.42 PM.png (288.14 KiB) Viewed 9834 times
Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.51 PM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-15 at 4.12.51 PM.png (316.23 KiB) Viewed 9834 times
User avatar
pgimeno
Party member
Posts: 3551
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 2:58 pm

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pgimeno »

Wow! My dream and Alexis Janson's dream of a purely graphical version of Megazeux looks like a big step closer!
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Haha, yeah! Probably!

This is a tiny step, since there is stuff that still needs to be done from a dev using the module/library/thingy to get it working. But closer!
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Almost done with file loading and saving. Once that's done, I'll start work on the wiki, on listing functions, and a thorough example that shows you how to use it.

This system would be ideal for using with point and click adventure games, or games like Legend of Mana, Saga Frontier 2, Tales of Eternia, with their hand painted backdrops. Or, even for games like the playstation final fantasy's, since they used pre-rendered 3d backdrops.

Anyway, more to come as I go along....
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Loading and saving files are in now and working perfectly. Have to finish the "change scene name" textbox, and then start working on examples/listing functions/help/etc...
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Decided to add in per layer scaling relative to the main scene scaling, and now parallax scrolling becomes much easier, much cooler, and far more complex, since you can place objects on scaled layers and have them move/interact in the background. So, various cloud effects, or people in a far off city moving below, etc. Could make for interesting multi-floor dungeons, similar to Zelda but more complex.

This is coming along nicely.

Just need to add one or two more tweaks, finish being able to rename or create new, and then onto the examples
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.37.19 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.37.19 AM.png (450.05 KiB) Viewed 9427 times
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.42.29 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.42.29 AM.png (424.99 KiB) Viewed 9425 times
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.42.02 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.42.02 AM.png (381.77 KiB) Viewed 9425 times
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.41.48 AM.png
Screen Shot 2023-06-22 at 8.41.48 AM.png (423.61 KiB) Viewed 9425 times
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Unlike TileD, there is no difference between layers, every layer has a background image and can have multiple objects placed on it, and is then scaled/etc accordingly
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Loading and saving and renaming is in...

Now just to work on documentation and examples.
pauljessup
Party member
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 4:06 am

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by pauljessup »

Here's a quick demo video I made of a test for foggy cliffs using some art I had lying around. The fog doesn't really tile up correctly, but that's just a test.

User avatar
Bobble68
Party member
Posts: 160
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2022 9:16 pm
Contact:

Re: Simple Scene Designer: something I've been working on

Post by Bobble68 »

Oh that is rather fancy
Dragon
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], Google [Bot] and 64 guests