Visit3: World Editor Preview

So what does this mean? Well, a number of things really.

This video shows my progress over the last 2 months on Visit3. If you weren't aware, a while back I announced my intentions to create Visit3 using the XNA framework with the intention of placing it on the XBoxLive Indie Games service that Microsoft provides.

Here's the breakdown of what's pretty much "finished":

TileSet Editor

This includes a bunch of stuff. First off, I can customize ANY tileset's Color and Pattern as well as place them on any of 3 different layers (since that's all I'll really need). The best and greatest ability is that the tiles autoformat when I place them, giving each tile the correct siding for all possible combinations, while at the same time, differentiating itself from tilesets that are not the same type.

Not only is that pretty spiffy, but it also means that placing tiles is easy as HELL compared to what I had to do using GameMaker. The average room takes about 5 minutes to place and tweak the tiles, whereas Visit I&II took around 20-30.

RoomStyles

This is a little more complex to comprehend (possibly), but "RoomStyles" provide easy ability to modify the backgrounds and ambient effects that are in the room. I can set things like weather/overlays (not present in the video, or in the editor yet, anyway) very quickly, and I'll usually only have to change it once, as all of the rooms in the game look to a specific style that I've set them to using the editor.

Particles

This is pretty self explanatory, but I've also got particles in and working. I made a nifty editor to tweak things like explosions, rain, and other things to look pretty in game.

End of Post Notes

I really don't have any intentions of making the editor open source for a couple of reasons. One, the editor is EXTREMELY weird to use for people who aren't me, as it requires you know a lot of information on how the editor windows function. The other reason is that I'm not going to be able to give support like updates and tutorials because I am WAY too strapped for time, and I really do want to get the game done.

Thank you so much for taking a look at the video. The next thing on my list is to start making GameObjects and be able to place them into the editor.