Phlegm, GM Level Editor

Alongside with gnome 2.0 I'm developping "Phlegm", short for Potentially Helpful Level Editor for Game Maker.


The menu looks bland, but at least it works =)

So what is Phlegm actually and why do I try to go another way instead of using GM's built-in editor?

Here are some features that the GM built-in editor doesn't have:
+ Phlegm saves your maps in *.plv files. And the game also loads the maps from these files. So this makes possible to load several maps in the same room at once.
Opportunities to use:
- Metroid style kind of game: you never leave the original room, but just load the next map next to the current one. Afterwards, you just destroy the old map.
- Or you could just use an SMB engine and load level 1-2 right after 1-1 so you can physically WALK back and forth between these two.
- Multi maps. You can create a basic map, and create a second map with enemy set A and a third map with enemy set B. (probably for "hard" and "easy" settings). Finally you can load the basic map and over this map you load your enemy set or even both of them!
- Updates! If you want to supply your fanbase with more and more levels, just do so by adding them later! Of course this requires you to code a support for levels that were not delivered with the game.

+ In Phlegm you can copy and paste portions of the map with a simple swing of your mouse.
Opportunities to use:
- I hope I don't need to explain this!

+ Phlegm supports paralax background scrolling even in the editor, so you can look how the backgrounds will look when you move the view.
Opportunities to use:
- You can visualize the actual level better, and thus it helps you to work better with backgrounds and stuff.

+ You can create objects that are not defined by a sprite, but by a rectangle and stretch this rectangle with your mouse and instantly view this in the editor.
Opportunities to use:
- You could create "zones" this way easily. Of course this needs the appropriate coding in your engine.

Other stuff:
- Move your entire room or scroll through it with your mouse
- Phlegm now encrypts and decrypts the files with a password of any size.
- And I'll add more stuff as the development goes.


And of course stuff that GM features too:
+ place objects or tiles (in multiple layers) and backgrounds
+ Add integer or string arguments to your object (the code was removed for savety reasons)
+ Change size of the grid
+ Operate a Tile Layer list (with Add, Change and Delete)
+ etc.

Recent Additions:
+ ID Converting functions. To use if you want to defrag your IDs with LGM.

How to use Phlegm in your games:
Not at all! Yes, you've read right! You do not use Phlegm, but I do! =)
But in case you're interested, this needs to be implemented in your engine (easily via the "merge games" function in GM) so it can compile a list of your objects.


Questions and comments if you have them.
Note: Maybe this WILL go open-source (bolded as a bait for open-source maniacs) one day, but if that's the case, I expect some credit! But well let's see how it develops first.

This post has been edited by Guinea on Aug 11 2008, 03:28 PM

Sounds awesome. It'd definitely will be awesome to have a stage editor for New Super Mario Battle.

Oh just in case it isn't clear:
This level editor is not for the players, but for the maker of the game... gets confused pretty often, so I say that now.
Also, thanks Ultramario and congrats on being the first to post my topics twice in a row. =)

Looks interesting so far, and the name is both clever and awesome.

Interesting to see someone developing a GM counterpart to Tile Lattice.

This looks awesome. I can't wait for it to come out! Do you think you'll make it open source, or just an executeble file?

looks interesting

Thanks for your positive comments!

ndsfreak:
This will probably be open-source if it goes public, as it needs to be "installed" into your own engine. If I find a way to do it in exe format, I'll do that though =)

As I read on, I got more and more interested in the details until I had the thought of "mandatory download" in my head. And then I read the last part. I laughed, even though I probably shouldn't have.

This looks very interesting Guinea, can't wait for it.

Well, I might use this for my fangame if this goes far.

well this looks freaking good
would love to use this
just one thing I'd like to see
you can select a huge region, and place one type of tile/object in it
that'd be very useful imo

I finally get to see a screenshot of it and it sure does look good. And with all the functionality, must have been a hard job programming it.

Thanks for your input. I might use that idea =)

Also thanks for positive comments, rest of you!

This would be a great add-on for fangames! Super Mario Forever had an editor. (But it was rather hard to use it) This looks just perfect.

wtf vista

This looks interesting, I will be looking forward to it. But why the name phlegm?

"Potentially Helpful Level Editor for Game Maker"

Lol sorry I missed that part.

Great idea, and one that is needed for a long time. If you can, give a primer on how to code support for .plv files so developers can use these external level files in their games.

Perhaps the "P" in Phlegm can now stand for "Particularly" or "Pretty", as in "Particularly Helpful..." and "Pretty Helpful...", because this can really make level designing much more streamlined.

Is PLV a custom format?

Custom, yes. It stands for Phlegm LeVel...
In fact these are nothing but renamed text files, but I'm about to find a way of encrypting them to at least make it a little challenge to hackers who think hacking fangames is cool >_>

How're you saving your maps in Tile Lattice, RII?