Level Editor Exam

Introduction

This is a project for my Tools Programming exam during my 5th semester.

In this project I will incorporate these points:

• Implement a tile-based level editor
• Tiles should affect neighbouring tiles in a sensible way
• Code written in C# and XAML
• WPF as GUI
• The tool will support serialization and deserialization
• A description of the serialization format, for importing purposes

I also decided to include this optional point:

• Use git as a version control system

Planning

Before I started writing anything, I decided to make a plan. I made a sketch of the design, and planned out the basic functionality I wanted in my project.

Unfortunately the sketch image is for some reason lost. Though the final product does look quite similar to my original vision.

Visualizing the way I want it to turn out first, makes it easier to code afterwards. This is because I now have a clear goal in mind when I code. I would explain it like this:

Finding your way from start to finish is easier on a path of light, than in complete darkness.

High level overview

The application is a tile-based level editor that is able to save and load levels.
The user is also able to choose the size of the level.

Design

I decided to use the MVVM design pattern, and tried to stay as true to the pattern as possible.

Features

Current features include:

• Creating a custom-sized level
• Three default custom tiles made by me
• Click and drag functionality
• Saving and loading levels on device with JSON serializing

Challenges

• Finding out how UserControls work and how to implement them properly
• Implementing X & Y coordinates for my tiles, before the implementation of coordinates, all tiles would change image if a single one was changed.
• Properly serializing and deserializing with a 2D Array

Satisfactory results

• The design and layout of the windows
• The use of UserControls to minimize the amount of boilerplate in codebehind
• The click and drag functionality

Currently known bugs

• If you have selected a tile different than empty and save the project, your selected tile will become the empty tile again.

Formatting

Currently there are three default tiles.

• Empty | e
• Grass | g
• Water | w

Each of these represent the letter next to it in the serialization process.

Testing

As you might have noticed, there are no tests for this project. That isn't to say that I didn't try.

The reasoning for this, is simply that I do not know nor understand how to implement tests, when most of the functionality of this project is based on custom events.

Further development

There are quite a few points I think this project can be further developed.

Tiles

Add a button on the toolbar to open a new window. In this window you can choose an image (48x48 only).
You will also have to choose a letter to use for the serialization process.

Tilesets

Folders that contains tiles can be custom tilesets. Currently in the project I have a button for the default tileset.

Undo/Redo

By using custom events, make a list of the last 7 changes made. The user will be able to undo/redo within these 7 changes until another change is made.
The newest change removes the oldest change. If you undo and make a different change all redos are removed.

Formatting

Make a better system for formatting. Currently the solution is to manually assign and check for the letters corresponding to the tiles.

Unity Importing

Add support for exporting levels from level editors that can be imported into unity.

Improved saving/loading

Be able to save levels with a name, and load them with that name. That way you can have multiple levels saved.
The current solution only allows for one level to be saved locally.