The first week of April has seen some good progress.
As promised last week, I’ve been continuing work on the level editor. I ended up dropping AngularJS as it was proving too much of a learning curve and I could see the hours just melting away ;) . Instead, I’ve retained my Ruby API and opted for a pure JS solution. It’s working great! Much cleaner that the previous code igniter solution I had. Extended it doesn’t fill me with dread which is a good sign.
So what’s actually been completed?
Well, I have the level editor in place with functional level publishing, level loading, tileset switching, and exporting to plist (the underlying data format I’m using for my game engine). For development purposes, the export is not actually required, instead my game just calls the appropriate API route which dynamically generates the content. It all works.
There’s still more to do though. I need to be able to place NPC’s, add conversation to them, place loot, and build maps (which is now crucial to my level structure). I’ll also need to be able to place shops and write quests (once the functionality exists in my game engine).
Next week I’ll focus on Loot placement. Producing content for the game is going to be onerous but this level editor is really going to make things that much easier (and more pleasurable :) ).
See you next week.