game-editor.com

game editor makes level construction simple by just letting you paste evey terrain and prop sprite you need relative to whare it will be in the actual game. i look into ged files like incursion and find that as in many instances, it is more efficiant to have separate collision sprites and such. these elements seem to be hard to keep track of if eveything is on a single editing layer so my thoughts are it would be nice to have multiple editing/visibility layers so you can have a layer for all your collision stuff and one for your scrolling background/foreground effects. the layers you are NOT working on would fall into a colorised transparancy say a red/blue or green tone, changing incremently based on the z depths. that way you can work on placing elements on the one layer, but the other layers still have some visual pressance so not to leave you working blind- but these layers won't be hiding the sprites your moving around if they happen to be on top.

hmmm i like this idea would make keeping track of objects in my rpg's alot less time consuming when i hit the mapping stage

Well you can create layer handles by using parent. Assuming you aren't dealing with these actors' xy coordinates (as dealing with parents and xy is a little harder), then you can have a certain layer parent a certain actor. If you want to make that layer disappear or turn semitransparent, change the transparency of the parent.

skydereign wrote:Well you can create layer handles by using parent. Assuming you aren't dealing with these actors' xy coordinates (as dealing with parents and xy is a little harder), then you can have a certain layer parent a certain actor. If you want to make that layer disappear or turn semitransparent, change the transparency of the parent.

Using this method, and having the Dummy actor in the center of the game would simulate game coordinate and could be changed in game easily! like fading out certain layers or something

Good idea. I usually dedicate that area for my menu, but that would work. Also, I was using the handles not as a way of hiding layers, but moving them around, so for me that wouldn't work, but as long as that's not the case for you, it would work perfectly.

skydereign: thats a good solution. made some 'layer parent' icons to make it look classey and easy to see. will still have to drag the screen around to get at them in a large level though. (be a while before i ever be at that stage though- and can always make parents for each section of the layout)
Edit: wanted to upload layer icons here but its not working yet, if not i post else were, just search 'layericonpics'