When starting the editor you are presented with an empty editor screen and to get going, we should create a new project by going to the “File” -drop down menu and selecting “New Project…”.
When starting the editor you are presented with an empty editor screen and to get going, we should create a new project by going to the “File” -drop down menu and selecting “New Project…”.
In the New Project dialog all we need to do for now is to enter a name for the dungeon and hit create and you should be presented with a blank map with a small room in the middle, where the player party starts in, that we can start working on! First, we’re going to need the draw tunnels tool to carve some empty spaces in the rock so let’s take a brief look at the tools palette: in the top left hand corner we have three buttons: select entity, add object and brush tool, which is used for drawing tiles. You’ll be switching between these tools pretty frequently so it’s good to learn their shortcuts which can be accessed by pressing 1, 2 and 3 on your keyboard.
Let’s pick the brush tool and carve some hallways and rooms for the player to get lost in! First, make sure that the “tiles”-layer is selected and then we can start drawing tunnels and walls. Each mouse button can hold a single tile type on it and they can be individually selected from the asset browser by left- and right-clicking on the list. However, usually it’s quicker to pick the tiles right off the Map View by hovering over the map and pressing the “,” and “.” keyboard shortcuts.
To ease editing, you can zoom the Map View with Numpad + and -, and pan around with Space+LMB.
Preview
To try out the dungeons you are creating, all you need to do is to press the play button above the preview or F5 on the keyboard. The game will start running and you can move around in the dungeon in the usual fashion with W, A, S and D. You can access fullscreen mode by pressing F while in the preview.
You can freely edit the level while the preview is running. Any changes you make to the level will be instantly reflected in the preview when you press play again. Pressing the stop button will stop the preview and move the player party back to the starting location. The starting location can be easily changed by hovering over the map and pressing Y and while the preview is running, the party can be teleported by hovering over the map and prressing T.
While running the preview in the editor, the player is equipped with a torch that never runs out to ease the testing of the dungeon. This torch will be present only in the editor so when the dungeon is exported, the player party will start without items.
Using Assets
A dungeon with nothing but empty hallways in it isn’t terribly exciting so what we need to liven up the place is some assets! Objects like items, monsters, doors and decorations are all assets and there are some assets that are only directly visible to the level designer such as script entities, blockers, timers and spawners. Asset browser is used to add instances of assets, which are called entities, to the level and you can use the search or the filter drop down menu to make finding them easier. Adding entities to the level is as simple as picking them from the browser, at which point your active tool is automatically changed to adding assets, and clicking on the map.
The select entities tool (shortcut 1) can be used to select entities so that you can move them around or manipulate their parameters in the Inspector. When one or more entities are selected, they can be moved with W, A, S and D and their orientation can be changed with Q and E. You can delete selected entities with the delete key and the entities can also be cut, copied and pasted with ctrl-X, ctrl-C and ctrl-V.
In the next article we’ll learn how to create outdoor environments and add water to the levels.