Creating the initial level editor

Currently I am working on the level editor.

With the current state, basic levels are already possible. As you can see in the screenshot, you can add solid blocks (the ones you will be moving on) and tiles. Ingame, the solid blocks are invisible of course, you will only see the tiles.

Recently I added the possibility to save and load a level. The menus still are very... inexistent - but the functionality is here.

A few imporant things are still missing:

Chunks are displayed but do not affect how the level is loaded/saved. Instead of smashing everything into a single file, I want to create multiple files with information for each chunk so they can be loaded in and out flexible for performance. This is an important step I need to make for big maps to be open-world with reasonable performance - although I still don't know how to deal with some of the loading: Should enemies also be loaded on demand when a chunk is loaded? That means loading a chunk takes more time, but the initial loading will be slower. The alternative would be to load all enemies into the game when you enter the level. Initial loading will be longer in this case and it definitely uses up more memory. I am not sure which solution is the best...

You cannot place enemies yet. I want at least a basic version of placing enemies. "Basic" in this case means, you can place an enemy, but for instance no spawner which would create a certain amount of enemies in an area over time - like zombies coming out of the ground in castlevania games.

And finally: You can't set the player spawn point yet.

When these 3 features are implemented, I think I am ready to post an alpha build! I am really excited! Especially, since there are probably plenty of bugs I have never triggered... heh.

For the future, there is of course more planned for the level editor. Music and sounds are not implemented in any way so far. When I work on this topic, the level editor will get the possibility to add music on a chunk. Also chests/items will be another topic, but the game needs more polish before I go there. Finally, adding story and maybe even cutscenes... but this is probably the furthest thing away.

This marks the beginning of the devlog, which I started, because I want discussions and thoughts on certain topics. So here are todays questions:

• Should I enforce that chunks where music is set needs at least 1 chunk space between a chunk with a different soundtrack? My thought behind this is, that crossing a chunk from soundtrack A to B would change the music too quick; it would create an invisible border where the music changes. Another solution might be, that the music only changes, when you are deep enough in the chunk.
• I have plans to have 3 versions of this game on itch: the main one has a tile-size of 32 pixel which allow detailed enough pixel characters but it requires some work of course. I thought of creating a version for lower res (16px or 8px per tile) which would allow characters of the size of megaman to fit better and a high res version of the game (128px per tile maybe) to allow high res characters (drawn by hand or pre-rendered 3d to fit in naturally. This would of course change the UI and overall resolution of the game. I think it is possible, but it requires some work. Should I try to achieve something like this or is the 32px version enough?

Let's see how many people will be reached with this little devlog.

See ya! TM