Game Editor Update

Development on the game editor has been chugging along nicely now.
The editor breaks the game down into logical folders.  These folders are there only to help conceptualize the game you are making, and don't actually have any bearing on the engine itself.  Here's how it is coming together so far.
General: Here you adjust basic editor settings such as the preferred file export format, and the start up script.
Tile sets: Here you import tiles for use in maps and just about all other rendering in the game.  Images linked into collections to help you organize your media.  There are no such things at tile sets once the game has been compiled, as the engine will see it all as a list of images in the end.

Maps:  Depending on what kind of game you are making, maps will be used in different ways.  For most game types, maps will be the levels, world, or zones of the game.  Your characters and other in game objects will be oriented on a map, and the player will see the maps like zones in your game.  Maps are a grid of tiles. Think of a Chess board, except of any arbitrary number of rows and columns, and each "block" can be colored by a tile from a tile set to construct the world, piece by piece.

Sprites:  think of sprites as animated objects.  You can use a sprite for your characters, or for buildings, monsters, trees, or even entire levels if you so choose.  Sprites consume much more processing time in the game engine to handle than maps, so if you are planing on making a world out of sprites, consider maps instead...  Sprites are built up of animation sequences, each with its own name.  Each animation sequence has a list of directions associated with it, and each direction has a list of images.  For example, say you want your main character to walk north, you would set your sprite to use animation sequence "Walk" and direction "North", then tell it where to go.  The sprite will automatically animate the movement based on the images associated with this sprite.  There is more to it than that, but you probably get the idea well enough for now.

Sounds: Every good game has sound in one way or another.  Sounds can be anything from sound effects of gun shuts, sword slashes, car tire screeches, or explosions.  The background music for the town your character walks around in will be considered a sound too.

Scripts:  here is the real meat and potatoes of your game.  Scripts are responsible for every conceivable action that your game will take.  A start up script (Which you specify in the general options) will be responsible for loading up basic resources needed by your game, such as main menus, character animations, sprites, etc.  The scripts will be responsible for coordinating everything that goes on in the game, and a powerful language is being developed to make this process as simple as possible, while still allowing the greatest flexibility.  Many more of these blog posts are to come that will talk about scripts, so stay tuned.

The game editor also now supports saving and loading project files.  Nothing ruins my day more than building a sample game, testing it out, needing to make one change, but being required to develop the sample game all over again from scratch because there is no save/load button.  Well, now there is, and it works quite well.

More is to come on the editor, as development continues.  Stay tuned!