Game Editor: Making Sprite Editors

Before the level editor can place a sprite, you need to give it a little information about the sprite.

  • Place a folder in the
    editor's "sprites" folder.
  • Use DefaultSprite.exe to tell the editor what the sprite looks like.
  • Create editor.swf, which the editor will use to edit the sprite's settings.
Sprite folder
In the editor's "sprites" folder, create another folder and name it after the sprite's linkage name. This will allow the editor to place the sprite.

editor.swf
  The level editor will send a bunch of information to this editor, which will all be available when you get to frame 2. You'll mostly be interested in this object:
editor.sprite.data
This object stores all the settings for this sprite. They can be whatever you want. At first, it'll be empty. So you'll want to define your settings when this sprite is first created and this editor is loaded.
CODE

  By defining the settings in this way, they'll be created when the editor is opened for the first time. But they won't get overwritten with default values afterwords.
Now all you have to do is use some flash components to allow the user to change these variables, and your editor will be complete.


Available data
  The level editor makes lots of information available to sprite editors.
PASSED DATA:
__ (editor)
____ (cursor) Cursor component
____ (menuBar_mc) MenuBar component
____ (status) Help text object
____ (clipboard) Clipboard object
____ (levelChanged) Tracks level changes

____ (data) current level's data
____ (sprite) selected sprite's data
______ (editSprite) sprite image settings
______ (position) location on the map
________ x Horizontal pixel location
________ y Vertical pixel location
______ [flags] array of flag strings
______ (data) this sprite's settings
______ type sprite's linkage name
______ name sprite's instance name
____ snapping Map snapping: true/false

____ (map_mc) Map component
____ (sprites_mc) Sprites component
____ (overlay_mc) empty movieClip
____ (fileBrowser_mc) file browser

I won't go over all these right now since it would take a very long time to explain them all.



Video Tutorial
  Still confused? Click the link below to see a video demonstrating how it's all done!

Video tutorial

Last updated: April 27, 2010