Re: The Level Editor

[Andy Balaam]

Ingo Ruhnke wrote:

> "Neil Mitchell" <address@hidden> writes:
>  
>
> > I think that a proper GUI environment would probably be better
> > suited to the level designer, instead of the ClanLib thing at the
> > moment.
> >    
> The only advantage a real GUI toolkit would give is less CPU usage.
> Beside that we don't really need all that much widget or stuff,
> clanGUI has enough of that for our use.
I do think that a level designer is much more a "standard" GUI app than 
a game, and so could probably be handled better using a standard GUI 
toolkit.  The advantages you would get are stability, consistency, 
flexibility and usability (by using the user's expectations to make the 
learning curve shallower).

> I don't see much point in throwing a 95% working editor out of the
> window and writing something from scratch, its not that we have dozen
> of level desigers complaining...
I agree.  I would want to use as much of the code from the old editor as 
possible.  Of course, all of this is motivated by my own feelings about 
the current editor - I just found it / am finding it hard to learn.  I 
think Pingus the game has reached a new level of polish and maturity 
which makes me very happy, and I'd like to be part of the process to 
catch the level designer up to the same level of polish.

> Beside that I kind of like instant level testing that an integrated
> editor allows, which you couldn't really get all that easily with a
> seperate one.
That is the killer feature of the editor and it would have to be 
incorporated somehow to make the designer at all useful.

But I'll stop talking now until I've got some code and/or a design 
document to back up my ideas.

(Don't hold your breath!)

Andy