Since the last update things went a bit quiet but for a reason. A lot of work has been spend on rewriting the old intermediate map editor into a the new Drag[en]gine World Editor. This caused two major changes to the editor. First the toolkit changed from Gtk to FOX and second the OpenGL rendered has been replaced with the game engine as render backend. Hence the editor is now close to a sandbox editor in that you have a WYSIWYG of your world while you edit it ( including real time lighting, shadows, transparency and so forth ). As it uses the Drag[en]gine you can also test with different modules while editing the world to check out different quality situations.
Why no "full" sandbox? In contrast to other game engines which provide such sandbox editors this engine allows the developer to use any scripting module he feels comfortable with. The result is that the editor has no idea what language is used so a true sandbox is nearly impossible. To cope with this the decision has been made to split editing up into "external" and "internal". Both can be used independent of each other so the choice is up to the developer what suits himself more. The external tools use the engine as render backend and resource manager to give a pretty good preview of how it looks in the game. The internal tools are provided by the used scripting Module. The idea is to provide editors by the scripting Module that can then be "extended" by the game adding the specific abilities. This way two flies are hit with one strike. The editor is programmed ontop of the game engine and therefore is easier to write and every new game can adapt the editor to match the internal workings of the game. Here a small summary:
External:
+ Games are not required to support editing mode
+ Same editing GUI for all games based on this engine
+ Independent of game and scripting Module
- Game specific extensions are often not simulated in the preview
Internal:
+ 100% accurate preview of in-game look
+ Game specific extensions easy to add to the editors
- Quality and GUI of editor depends on used scripting Module
- Games have to support editing mode
The internal editor is currently future music but the external editor is in the making. You can have a look at it right below.
![Drag[en]gine](https://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/engines/1/1/9/crop_120x90/banner_large.png)
Looking nice. Been watching development on this since the start :D
Yea, it sure looks nice :D
Is it possible to turn things like transperency, real time lightning, etc. on and off in real time, so that I can get more performance for mapping?
While running you have the same access to the engine like in the game. Hence you can either manipulate the "module parameters" of the running graphic module to disable certain things temporary or you can use a simpler graphic module giving more speed. Either of them ( parameter change or module change ) can be done during run-time.