So just to prove that I’m a masochist and that the Dodger Editor is not dead (even though I don’t think that anyone has been using it) I thought I’d post a quick update. No the editor is not dead and no neither am I.

I’m still writing for Python Magazine and working on the editor in some of the free time that I get. I just added a selection cursor mode to the editor which makes it easier for me to use. You can see it in the second row of the pallet in the following screen shot.

Now with a Select Mode!

If you want access to the newest code you can grab it from the mercurial repository: http://freehg.org/u/selsine/dodger/

If anyone is at all interested in this project, whether it’s using or helping to develop, or just some suggestions please let me know. I’m always open to opinions. If I get the time I’d like to work on a short post showing you how you can use the Dodger Editor to create the level files for a game, when that will be I don’t know but hopefully soon.

I know it’s been a while and for that I apologize the last few months have been pretty crazy around here…although I’m starting to see a trend with life in general lately, namely that it’s always crazy.

I’ve been busy with work, Python Magazine, my wife, trips to Dallas, and yes whenever I get a chance this slowly growing level editor. Let’s see what I’ve been working on for the last little while:

Name: There has a been a name for the editor ever since I started working on it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to think up something really cool and change, or leave it. Turns out I just left it.

So from this point forward this project is christened: “Dodger”, or probably more correctly: “Dodger Level Editor”.

The name has its roots in the name of one of my cats and a history in the multitudes of level editors and game engines that I have tried to create in the past, but I wont’ go into that. So Dodger it is.

Saving and Loading: Saving and loading in the default YAML project type now really works. I still need to put in support for optional project types: XML, JSON, and other formats

Welcome Dialog: This was a real pain, but it’s made the last while so much easier. I added a working (at least I hope) welcome dialog with a way to create new projects, open old ones, and a recent file list. The recent file list really makes testing easier for me.

Rect tracking: Rect tracking is finally working properly. I’ve had the rect tracker in there for a while but it didn’t really do anything until now.

Multiple Selection/Multiple Properties: I’ve also finally got multiple selection going, which is what makes the rect tracker actually useful. You can select multiple sprties, move them around and add properties to all of them.

Remove Properties: Now you can remove custom properties that you have added. This was a must but I was lazy and left it for a while.

Steps towards being made public: A lot of the changes (and I do mean a lot) that I’ve been making have been behind the scenes. There has been a lot of refactoring and reorganizing of the code, often the result of quick and dirty implementations that I made earlier (sigh). I’ve also started working on getting the distribution of this editor going so that other people can use/develop it.

I’ve added support for zc.Buildout so that if anyone wants to develop they can quickly gather dependencies and won’t have to install the editor system wide, not that you have to anyways but zc.Buildout is really neat.

I’ve also worked on the license (GPLv3) and setup.py and README and all of that. None of it’s done but it’s working its way forward.

Faster: It’s also much faster now. None of you have used it so you’ll probably think it’s slow, but trust me it’s much faster then it was before.

Bugs: There have been loads of bugs that have been fixed and created. Plus one doozy related to
changes made to pyglet. Not pyglets fault but it took a long time to figure out what the issue was.

Google Code: The project has a temporary homepage over at google code: http://code.google.com/p/dodger-editor/ There’s nothing there yet but over time I will start to host the project there so that people can easily download it. I’ll still post updates here until the site has a full-time home.

I’m going to use Mercurial for the revision control system for the project so the CVS support at the google code site will just be for downloading. Eventually I will want to host the project on some space of my own and get a nice web interface for the mercurial repository going. I’ll have to find a new hosting company so it will take a while.

So that’s it, that’s what’s happened to the Dodger Level Editor over the last few months. I know I promised to make it public earlier but given the shape it was in at that time there really was no point. I want this to be at a point where people can actually almost use it before I make it public.

I know it’s been a while, and I know the few of you that actually care about this project have probably moved onto bigger and better things, but hopefully if you stick with me there will be something out soon.

So I had some free time since I last posted so I hacked a little bit more into my simple game editor. I’ve a few things in there that I wanted to get in:

• A grid
• A paint mode to easily add sprites
• An erase mode so that sprites can be removed
• Fully (or so it seems) working property addition to the sprites
• Added some organization to the code. I was hacking on this enough that putting things in their right spot started to make more and more sense.
• Started to use mercurial to keep track of source changes. I know how important version control is, and after making a silly mistake I decided that I wanted to start using it with this project.

You can take a look at how things are working here:

It’s not pretty yet, but it’s coming along.