Game designer

[StubblyOne]

Hi

We are about to start on a project that will be an all in one game developement environment. There is a team of 9 developers who have all got a background in software engineering some have worked on AAA titles. Our original idea was to use DX12 or opengl for this, but we decided it would be more fun to use a library like sfml and would cut down on some code that would need to be written. It will be very similar to unity.

Our goal for part 1

• main GUI - written in sfml
• level designer 2d- vector or tiled
• custom scripting language also support for lua

The scripting would be introduced further down the line but we have already started working on our scripting.

This will be geared towards platformers, RPG and scrolling shooters but im sure you will find other types of games can be made in it.

We are all currently in full time employment and have families, so this is done in our spare time, i will keep you informed and add videos and screenshots as we get stuff done. Also through each step as its complete we will release a test version for you guys to play around with and give feedback on what you think we should change. This will be a closed sourced project but all credit will be given to what libraries get integrated.

We have all the steps layed out on our goals but dont want to spoil what will be coming in future versions.

We currently are looking at 3 months for GUI and level editor part of it. But will post screens as we go along.

Please feel free to comment and ask for feature requests. If its viable we will implement features down the line

[eXpl0it3r]

Sounds interesting and I'll look forward to seeing some results.

If you aren't already doing that, I'd personally highly recommend to focus on the writing of a simple but complete game during the development of the tools, because in my opinion the most useful tools can only be created through the requirements of a real project. In many cases what you think a tool might need isn't what is really needed, especially when it comes down to workflows - what actions have to be repeated over and over again and are they simple to do or do they require a lot of small sub-actions, etc.

[StubblyOne]

Hey exploit3r

Thank you for taking the time to get back to us.

We are making a 2D shooter during development of this. A few of us have experience with making tools for games and games. I worked at SNK for a number of years. One of the other members has worked at ID and at Rockstar North. Most of the ideas and features that we have got in our list are stuff that we have had to write code numerous times for during development of various titles. Our main goal is to have something to demo by the middle of March

[StubblyOne]

Little update, we are currently working on the GUI. This part we are talking about releasing as a library sometime in the future. We have implemented the custom headerbar, menubar, toolbar, footer, buttons, labels, checkboxes, textboxes and other little bits and bobs. Our main GUI programmer is fiddling with the sfml source to see if he can fix the getDesktopMode to work properly on windows. Fingers crossed he finds a work around.

Here is a screenshot of the the start of the gui. The footer currently lets you know where the mouse is on screen x,y coordinates, but i stupidly hid the mouse while taking the screenshot. Also as it was taken on windows the getDesktopMode button for resizing to fit the screen is hidden.



Once we have the tilemap implemented we will add a box with a list view to select the tile to drag and drop to the grid. This should be done by the end of next week. I will make a video to show the menubar working in the next few days when i find some time.

We currently have only one theme the dark theme, but are looking to make it fully customizable for the end user. This will be done later. I just hate light themes so we chose a dark one as we are the ones currently using it. Also sorry its not more exciting, just a layout screenshot.

[HoodedSpectre]

This is pretty awesome, I look forward to more updates xD. I know this probably a question for later down the road but will you be publishing this for people to utilize? Like source or just even the editor itself?

[eXpl0it3r]

Our main GUI programmer is fiddling with the sfml source to see if he can fix the getDesktopMode to work properly on windows. Fingers crossed he finds a work around.

What's the issue?

[achpile]

level designer 2d- vector or tiled

try to use "Tiled" it's very good And it have JSON-export (which is much more easy to understand and use). I used it in my project

http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=20444.0

[StubblyOne]

What's the issue?

Nothing now. It was to do with our custom header. It was causing all sorts of glitches.

level designer 2d- vector or tiled

try to use "Tiled" it's very good And it have JSON-export (which is much more easy to understand and use). I used it in my project

http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=20444.0

There is stuff Tiled cant do. Tiled is a basic map editor. We are working on a full game editor. That will have everything built into it that you need for your game. Other than resources

This is pretty awesome, I look forward to more updates xD. I know this probably a question for later down the road but will you be publishing this for people to utilize? Like source or just even the editor itself?

Yes we will be releasing the editor, it is going to be a lengthy project though. We are looking at a minimum of 2 years to get the main stage done with our current workload. We will be releasing a beta of the map editor as soon as its ready. Its going to be a closed source project for the forseeable future.