TOS game editor
11 Dec 1997

This is an abandoned alpha of a 2D game editor. (download) (download src)

I call the editor for T.O.S. (The Other Side), that means the other side of a game, that side where the game developer spends lots of time.

The interface consist of the Resource part (like Visual Studio), one part from where you are copying stuff, and one part in whish you put in everything.

At the moment the Resource part consist of the following resources.

Tiles List

You cut out small square bmp:s called Tiles from a large bmp. These tiles will then be saved in a big Linked List. The list can include max 256 or 65536 tiles. This cause we want the tiles to be represented by a byte or a word. Later versions: There will also be animated tiles.

Multi Tile Maps

In this part you will use the tiles to make a big map. This map represents a world seen from the sky (C&C) or from the side (Super Mario Brothers). If we take C&C as the example, imagine that you have saved a couple of road tiles, one road that turns to right, one that turns to left, one that goes from left to right etc. With help of those tiles you can build a long road without the need of painting the entire road in one bmp. This will save both time and memory in the computer.

Later versions: There will be possible to put several maps over each other, and one color will be transparent. The effect of this will be that on the first layer you will put snow, sand etc. On the second layer you will put trees, houses and other fixed thing that the game player can destroy. In layer three you can put guns, ladders and other things the game player can get.

Animated Sprites

In this part you will copy small bmp:s from a large bmp like in Tiles List. But here you then place them in many linked lists, one linked list for every direction a sprite may have. For example left, right, up, down, jump. Later versions: In this version you will have to make linked list for every direction, but in later versions it will be possible to set some checkboxes and then you only have to fix up one linked list, and the other direction will rotate the bmp:s in that linked list.

Future versions resources:

Collision Detection

This part will exist between the Tiles List resource. You should here give the tile, a square or every pixel a status value. This value will then tell if the square makes damage, is water, is icy etc.

Object Placer

In this resource you will place the Animated Sprites on the Multi Tile Maps. The sprites can represent houses, mans, vehicles, things etc.

Preview

When you select the preview resource you will be asked for a graphics mode (640×480x16), if you want to show the sprites, all Multi Tile Map layers etc. Then the program will change resolution and show you all your chooses in fullscreen, and you will be able to scroll around in the world and see all the animations.

Perspective Maps

This part of the editor will be very useful for games like Broken Sword II, Space Quest etc. In this part you will place perspective areas, you will do this by marking different areas and then tell how many times larger/smaller a sprite will be if it walks into this area. This is useful when a man walks into alley and it will be smaller and smaller when he comes deeper into the alley.

Everything will then be save in one file, this will be done with the MFC Serialize() function.