Level Editor Progress: Part 1

BOXYCRAFT EDITOR: PART 1

Ive had a lot of people asking me about a level editor in Boxycraft recently, so I decided to write an article about my progress on it.

The biggest change from the previous editor shown in this video, is the move from using my own GUI to using windows forms. I decided on this because it allowed me concentrate more on adding features to the engine without wasting time making dialogs and controls.

(picture)

(the toolbar still needs some work)

All the tools are functional, and right now Im mainly fixing bugs, tweaking things and making small cosmetic changes.

(Picture: connecting switch to bolt)

I am also tring to make the game as moddable as I can, with custom effects, backgrounds and graphics. Heres someones attempt at making a “fancy” boxboy on the current version:

Unfortunately I didn’t make it too mod-friendly, so he couldn’t change the head or arms.

Does anyone have some good ideas on making the editor more efficient?

Ive had a lot of people asking me about the level editor for Boxycraft recently, so I decided to document my progress on it.

New Editor

The biggest change from the previous editor(shown in this video), is the move from using my own GUI to using windows forms. I decided on this because it allowed me to concentrate more on adding features to the engine than wasting time making dialogs and controls.

Old Editor

The old editor’s GUI has the potential to look really awesome if I put the effort into it, but Id rather spend that time working on the game itself.

All the tools in the new editor are functional, needing only a little tweaking, cosmetic attention and a few bugs to be fixed before it’s ready to roll! I can’t wait!

Anyway, thats all for now, but stay tuned because the next article will be showing off some of the more juicy parts of the editor: Shape Editing, Materials and Switches!

PiXEL PROSPECTOR

I just got a review on the PiXEL PROSPECTOR website! See the review.

It’s a great website that showcases promising looking indie games.

The review they gave me is really nice and includes some new gameplay footage and lots of great screenshots.

My little critters

Heres a picture of an experimental test level I made. The glowing pink balls are creature brains, which are attatched to the made up creatures and have their action is set to “follow”. There is an emitter at the end of the level that is constantly spawning the creatures.

When you jump on a creature brain the creature falls apart and you bounce happily into the air. If you time it right you can also bounce from one creature brain to the next without touching the ground. Luckily these creatures are harmless, so if you time it wrong you can always try again.

Another thing that I’ve done is written a new graphics structure that gets rid of the ugly lines you can see in the last screenshots when an object has a hole in it.

The editor is also smarter, so that when placing items such as wheels or brains onto an object it automatically clips them to the right position, no more need for fine adjustments or mouse control!

With just a click and a drag, you can now select multiple items and do with them what you want! Batch selection and modification saves a ton of work!

Even though the graphics look the same, I can promise that the level design possibilities have expanded by miles! All the work I’ve done has been on the editor and the code, allowing for more possibilies and adding more features.

Im pretty proud of my work, especially after I put the above level together in less than a minute with the new editor, and actually had loads of fun dodging and popping the creatures while they swarmed endlessly around me!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading about my game as much as I did putting it together.

Do you have any ideas or features you think I should include in my game? Or are there some things you’d like me to write about or post screenshots of?

Update, and a look at Magnetic Mind

Ok, heres a quick update on what I’ve done these last few days:

• I’ve changed sound engines from FMod to OpenAL
• I’ve changed the graphics style more towards the original look
• I’m busy making a button switch that you can activate by jumping on or putting a heavy object on
• Fixed some rendering issues
• Lots of little Tweaks! 🙂

Also, have a look at Magnetic Mind. Its a Dream Build Play entry thats looks similar to Little Big Planet, and it looks awesome!

The 3-man team laXarIS have really done a brilliant job on the graphics, physics and everything, and plus it looks like its performing really well on the XBOX! All the best for DreamBuildPlay2009 guys!

Toxic Bunny!

What a surprise! I just discovered that an ancient favorite game of mine is being ressurrected as a Java port!

Toxic Bunny

I first borrowed Toxic Bunny from a friend many years ago, and I absolutely loved it! Not only was it an extremely fun game, but it was also developed locally in South Africa, which made it even more attractive!

I was reminded about about this game when I read that Earthworm Jim was being ported to a number of consoles. This brought back some fond platforming memories, including some of Toxic Bunny. So I searched on google and this is what I found!

Its always good to see an old favorite getting new life, but this was also South Africa’s first hit in the gaming industry, selling over 150,000 units and being translated into French, Dutch, Polish and German. It was the spark that got our game industry going!

They are using javag as their game engine, which they wrote themselves and is all open source. They are documenting their progress on their blog, so go ahead and have a read!

Also, anyone interested can have a look at this article on Gamasutra. Its “The South African Game Development Scene: Past, Present and Future”. It was written by a writer from SAGAMEDEV.com, South Africas very own game development site, and it’s quite good.

Anyway, just something pleasing from my day, Cheers!

move like a brick and sting like a wasp?

Heres a problem I ran into while working on boxycraft:

A while after deciding to redo boxycraft, and after making some minor changes, the computer I was doing all the work on crashed. It just stuffed out and wouldn’t work. Luckily for me though the hard-drives were intact and I had an old crappy computer that was just collecting dust, so I put them together and started programming again.

But there was a problem, my game sometimes wouldn’t load the first level, because it ran out of memory! That was not good, and I couldn’t believe that it could play some really good games and not my simple one! What was I doing wrong?

Well, firstly, I loaded EVERYTHING into memory and didn’t free any of it up as I went along. I didn’t even stream the 2 music files, but loaded them both into memory, and they take up much more space when they’re uncompressed! And while I was developing on my old computer I didn’t even notice this because I had so much RAM! Now thats bad programming practices!

Anyway, after not being able to run my game when I thought I should be, I went and re-did my entire game-engine to free up any memory that wouldn’t be used. I did a pretty decent job, and got the game running, bit it’s also a job I’ve got to do all the time and with anything new that I add.

I learnt a valuable lesson!

Update – New look and stuff!

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for quite a long time, Ive just been really busy, but MAN have I done a lot of work on Boxycraft! Heres a list of things Ive added:

• Shapes
• Creature Brains (creatures can chase/flee player, and die when the player jumps on the brain!)
• Ropes
• Wobble Bolts
• Motor Bolts
• Pistons
• Sensor Switches
• Grab Switches
• Smart Grabbing (instead of grabbing in the  direction of the mouse, like the old version, you just press a key and the closest object is grabbed)
• Eyes that follow the player
• End of level Scoreboard
• Stickers
• Speech Bubbles
• Different Materials
• Checkpoints
• Wheels
• Emitters
• Sounds (attatch a sound to an object and have it play when the object collides or when a player comes in range)

As you can see, Ive been trying to add just about everything in Little Big Planet! 😀

Also, you can see that the graphics style has changed a bit, and Im trying to decide whether I should keep it or go back to the old style.

Ive also got dynamic shape editing in the level-editor, like what Little Big Planet has, so you can cookie-cut and add new objects with different shapes.

Because of this Im looking at changing physics engines from Physics2D.NET to Box2DX, to get rid of grid-spacing problems when creating complicated shapes, but I’ll see how it goes, because thats ganna be a lot of work! 😦

You can also see that Ive got different materials working, like wood, metal, glass etc., which is the main reason the graphics look so different.

Thats about it for now, but hopefully I can put together a cool video soon so you can see all this new stuff in action!

Thanks for reading, Cheers!

Behind Boxboy…

Boxboy can run, jump, grab hold of things, balace on top of rolling balls and so much more, which is really amazing with him being only a virtual box.

To figure out this madness, I chased him down and delicately split him apart lengthwise, using CTRL-X to cut, and after digging deep into his physical anatomy this is what I found:

First of all, all he really is a box and a ball, which are connected together by a Motor Joint.

The motor in this Joint is switched on whenever he wants to move, and will roll him over the ground at a constant speed. Like a one wheeled car.

To stop Boxboy falling over at every bump is a Fixed Angle Joint, which keeps his body at a specific angle. As he rolls along over the ground, this angle is adjusted to the angle of whatever he is standing on, and so prevents him from standing unrealistically upright on a slope.

To detect the angle of whatever he is standing on, and also to detect whether or not he is actually standing on anything, are 3 short Rays. These begin just under his Rectangle, and return the distance to the ground and the angle of it.

When Boxboy is standing still an Angle Joint clamps down on both his body and his circle, thus preventing him from rolling away out of control down a slope. Like what a handbrake does.

And thats it folks! I hope you learned somoething!

Sadly though, what I learnt was that I couldn’t put him back together again, but I should be able to figure that out with the next one…

“Little Big Planet for the poor!”

I got my first review (yay!), and that is how someone described Boxycraft in a comment!

I was pretty pleased, because even though they described it as not too good looking, they said it had a high fun factor, which is excellent!

Anyway, Im busy redoing Boxycraft at the moment, and apart from making it better looking, Im adding a load of new feautures, including new gameplay modes, objects and monsters.

I also plan to put much more emphasis on the 2 player mode, making it more competitive and co-operative.

Thats it for now, but I might have a small demo out soon with some new stuff in 🙂

Create and Play

Hello everyone

Thanks to everyone who tried out Boxycraft, and for the great responses and critisism I got. Theres a lot of things I hope to fix and change soon, and hopefully it can keep getting better!

At the moment though Ive been doing some big work on the Boxycraft Level Editor. Have a look at the video to see it in action.

Ive been looking through tons of Little Big Planet videos to see how their level editor works, and other physics games like Phun. Im trying to make it fun, easy and powerfull enough to build anything you can think of !

Integrating it into the game is a big change from the original form-based editor that Ive been using before, but I think it’ll be worth it, making it easier for people to enjoy the level they’re creating.

As you can see its not finished yet, and Ive still got a ton of work to do, features to include, graphics to improve etc. but its inspiring that its actually working!

And before I go heres 2 awesome physics games for you:

Max and the Magic Marker by Press Play

Hitlers Must Die! by Cryptic Sea

Cheers!