a script from the Game Maker Marketplace).Īdding tiles via flood fill is very simple and also takes walls into account. Adding functionality to place and remove tiles was quickly added, for the flood fill algorithm I needed some external help (a.k.a. This may sound like a no-brainer, but I was very happy when I realized that this was possible now.
Also, I didn’t split it up into chunks because of this, as no objects could move below the ground (even though I can fake this by assigning depth values by hand as I did in the train demonstration).Īs I changed the whole engine from rotating around the player to rotating the world instead, there was a new possibility to implement the ground that was way easier, more flexible and less ressource-hungry: tiles. Before they were just another piece of fake 3D geometry I put in a level (as one object) with the special feature that it is not affected by the depth-sorting algorithm (as the ground should always be below everything else). The first thing I had to think over was how I implemented the “ground” of levels. I already showed the basic workflow in one of my last updates, so I won’t go into detail about putting down objects and such, but rather highlight what is new. This might become messy if I take a longer break from it, as I’d likely forget which key does what, but I tried to only use Shift, Alt and Control for most of the stuff, so hopefully it’ll be managable. I have to admit I took some shortcuts in order to speed up development, like putting most functionality on hotkeys without any second methods of input (like buttons). The workflow of building the voxel models and getting them in a format that is usable for my fake 3D engine is already very time-consuming and complicated (needing four different programs), so my main focus was to make something that is very easy to use and only does what it needs to do.
But first let’s take a look at all the furniture I’ve created so far for the interior of many of the rooms you will be visiting.Īt first I wasn’t the biggest fan of my own idea, as I don’t have a lot of experience in creating tools and most of the time they come with their own limitations and usability issues. While working on that I also started implementing a basic lighting feature, which you can see in action in the gifs below. That made me come to the conclusion that making my own level editor (ironically in Game Maker) might be a good way to improve the workflow of putting together each level, of which there will be a lot. In addition to that the unique way of drawing objects in fake 3D by stacking layers of sprites makes it hard to imagine the final output from the flat representation in the room editor. As I was working on the little train ride demonstration I was already noticing a lot of slowdown when moving objects around. After that I’ve been quite busy with creating what will be the topic of this article: the level editor.įor those who know Game Maker: Studio it might not be shocking news that the room editor in Game Maker is quite lacking in functionality and user-friendliness. I took a break from development for a week to play through Shenmue (one of my favorite games of all time) and charge up my batteries a bit.