Game Editor

Game Editor

File:Game Editor.jpg
File:Game Editor screenshot.jpg The unique intuitive interface, with a create actor action window opened. You can see the game interface in the background.
Developer(s)	Makslane Rodrigues
Initial release	February 7, 2003
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Type	Game development/program development
Website	Game-Editor.com

Game Editor, often mentioned as "GE" on the Game Editor forums. is a relatively popular game authoring software. Offering multi platform development to Windows (95-Vista), Linux, Windows-based Smartphones, GP2X, Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs. Its compatibility with these platforms is also mentioned on Game Discovery a popular site for game developers, among other powerful software like 3D Gamemaker, Darkbasic, and Game Maker.

Game Editor was created by Makslane Rodrigues, who has been developing it since 2002, now with 30 releases, it is up to version 1.3.9, and is continually under development to date.

The information in this article can also be found (in different formatting) on the Game Editor website

Features

Because of the various sets of features, and the possibilities those grant, creating a game with little of no scripting knowledge is fast and easy.

Interface

The interface is very simple, and is easy to understand. It is filled with the infinite map which you can navigate through simply by dragging it any direction you want to. The main interface also includes a main menu at the top, also showing your position on the map, and icons indicating the mode(s) you are in. You can create objects, save, load, create new, merge, games, export or build your project, access a recently opened project, access scripts in you project within 2-3 clicks through the menu. The interface is divided into little windows, no need to "find" a button, because the interface is intuitive, easily overlooked.

Target platforms

Target platforms include Windows, Linux, Windows Mobile based Smartphones, GP2X and Handhelds. You can also make builds, or export your game data only. This is useful when you want the levels, or parts of the game apart in different files, but don't want them to be all executables. The software itself is available only on Windows and Linux, but see the "System Requirements" later on this page.

Scripting language

Game Editor uses the powerful, widely used C programming language for scripting, in its script editor, defined as a separate action you can do on an event. The script editor is nearly without restrictions on using the language. Anything from creating a simple variable, to complex nested loops and switches can be entered, and as long as the variables, functions are defined, Game Editor is capable of compiling it, allowing you to create even complicated strategy games, with AIs. The script editor itself gives you access to the built in names of objects (actors), variables and functions. It also does real-time syntax coloring, making code more readable, You can also include your own .c files in actions, and creating a Game Editor variable is also 2 clicks from the script editor.

Game Editor delivers powerful scripting within clicks.

Actor concept

The objects in Game Editor are called actors. Notably, this doesn't mean every actor has to be a character. You can add multiple graphics and/or animations to 1 actor, of your own, from the formats listed in the below table. Every image editor has to include at least one of those formats. Also Game Editor can recognize an alpha channel, and add transparencies, and in the case of all images, it recognizes the top-left pixel's color as the transparent color, and finally, there's a transparency value you can modify to set literally how transparent the actor will be overall, which gives various possibilities for adding visual effects to your game, e.g.: fog.

Actors can have either animation, or you can also add text to them, which is handy for help sections, menu descriptions, and RPG talk. With actors you can also play sounds, and add music to your game. This way you can be humming a tune while you play, and enjoy varius sound effects too in a game created with Game Editor. Again there are many file formats you can use. View the below table.

Supported image files	Supported sound files	Supported music files
.tga	.wav	.wav
.bmp	.voc	.mid/.midi
.pnm	.iff	.ogg
.png	.aiff	.mod
.xpm	.riff	.mod
.xcf	.8svx	.s3m
.pcx		.it
.gif		.xm
.jpg/.jpeg
.tif
.lbm

A very important aspect of actors, is that there are 4 types of them. The normal actor type is what the above talk about. There are also Wire-framed and Filled Regions, and Canvas actors. Wire Framed regions can serve as borders for some collision, but they're not visible in game, and cannot receive mouse click events, therefore if there's an important actor under it with a mouseclick action, then this should go above it, if needed for collision reasons. Filled Regions are also invisible, but can receive actions for mouse clicks. Canvas actors let you draw any line, image or others on them. This allows also the rotation and scaling of other images on other actors, as well as just a file on disk. Using this you could even create a paint program.

Events

The Game Editor engine is event driven. For something to happen in your game, Game Editor handles events you create using the interaction of actors, and other game elements, the mouse and the keyboard. In Game Editor, you can customize to a very high extent what actions happen on an event. Events that can be triggered:

• Activation event
• Animation Finish
• Collision
• Collision Finish
• Create Actor
• Destroy Actor
• Draw Actor
• Key Down
• Key Up
• Mouse Button Down
• Mouse Button Up
• Mouse Enter
• Mouse Leave
• Path Finish
• Out of Vision
• Timer

And here is a list of actions you can select to be done on any of those events:

• Change Animation
• Change Animation Direction
• Change Cursor
• Change Parent
• Change Path
• Change Transparency
• Change Z-Depth
• Collision State
• Conditional Action
• Create Actor
• Create Timer
• Destroy Actor
• Destroy Timer
• Event Disable
• Event Enable
• Follow Mouse
• Move To
• Physical Response
• Play Music
• Play Sound
• Script Editor
• Set Text
• To Anterior Position
• Visible State

Also, you can add as many actions to an event as you want to

Level creation

Designing and making levels functional is easy, based on the other features. But there must be ways to divide them in order to keep memory usage low. Game Editor provides 2 ways for this. 1 is creating separate files for each level, and then linking them only with 1-2 functions. But if the levels are small anyway, and you don't want to separate them so badly, then you can put all levels into one file, and surround the levels with activation regions which defines the surrounded part of the file loaded in and out of the memory together, depending on whether it is on screen or not. If you have earlier created a separate level file, then you can merge projects together into 1 file.

Non-actor objects

Game Editor also allows you to create Paths, and activation events. Paths are marked as nodes in Game Editor interface, and can specify a route the actor will move on. The speed of the path can also be modified, and the path can be made up of Bezier curves and linear lines too.

Activation events are another important aspect. When one actor receives an event, then if there's an activation event on that actor for that event, then it triggers an activation event on the specified actor. Example: If in game play to cars crash, and there's a hintbox actor which comments in-game events, and we want the hintbox to say: "2 cars crashed" when they did, then we create an activation event one of the cars, and make the triggering event a collision with another car actor, and then set the activation event receiver to Hintbox, and finally, create an action for the activation event on hintbox, which is a Set Text, and then we can specify the color, and font of the displayed text too. But there are many applications of this feature.

File extension

Game Editor, before exporting/building your game into an executable, it can save your project, into a .ged file. All versions of Game Editor are backwards compatible. Game Editor also adds a folder named "data" into the directory in which you saved the .ged to store the related graphics, animations, sounds, and music files. To save your undo/redo possibilities, a .ged.undo file is created.

Documentations

When you get Game Editor (no matter whether demo or pro) you are given a documentation reached from the main menu's Help section. To view the online documentation of Game Editor, click here. On the webpage of Game Editor you'll find the Game Editor forum which is highly active, and any question asked there is answered soon, usually within 24 hours. The forums and documentations also include tutorials of many kinds, with all the related files.

Download and press releases

Game Editor is available for free download on most of the software download sites. Like Download.com, Softpedia.com, DownloadMost.com. To download it from the Game Editor site click here. There have been a few press releases, like the earlier included Game Discovery page, a press release at Express Press Release and Free Press Release. Game Editor is also included in the widely used ambrosine game creation resource page..

Editions

Game Editor has two different editions. Demo and Pro. The Demo is free to download, with only 2 restrictions. If you have the Pro version, then you can export to all platforms, and no add is shown in you game executable. In the demo version an add appears in the bottom-left corner of your game, and you can only create executables for windows. However you can use all events, actions and elements of Game Editor otherwise.

System Requirements

• Windows 95/98/ME/2000/2003/XP/Vista, Windows Tablet PC, Linux
• x86 (Pentium, AMD..) or equivalent processor
• 200Mhz
• 32Mb RAM

Version history

version number	What was new there?	Release date
First Beta	-	Feb. 07. 2003
1.0 beta build 102	Directory navigation ok Tile collision ok Support old files ok	Feb. 10. 2003
1.0 beta build 103	More error-free load Initial ZDepth set to half of total Mouse click + left Ctrl select overlapped actors Add wait cursor for load operations Multiple file animation in alphabetical order Enter key now confirm dialogs and Esc key cancel dialogs Delete path node	Feb. 12. 2003
1.0 beta build 104	Improvement in actor move via keyboard and expressions Initial position in Create Actor action Added action 'To Anterior Position' that can avoid two actors overlapping in collision	Feb. 13. 2003
1.0 beta build 105	Bug in create timer ok Add Random path in Change Path action Add 'Destroy Actor' event Merge Games added Export game pack Animation Sequence C Script added	Mar. 04. 2003
1.0 beta build 106	Bug in stand alone mode ok "Animation Finish" now specify animation	Mar. 05. 2003
1.0 beta build 107	When select an action function, show respective action dialog to auto complete script Add music and sound loop Set game icon and game title caption in game properties Added enable or disable key repeat per event Removed bug when destroy actor in path finish event Added 'action type': when new action is added, choose 'immediate action' or 'wait for frame action'	Mar. 09. 2003
1.0 beta build 108	Read animated gifs Added nframes in actor attributes Added move angle in actor attributes (set or get actor angle) Added directional_velocity in actor attributes Open game in machines without sound system Removed bug when move actor in collision event Added 'no change' option in change animation Added 'Out of Vision' event Added new tutorial vectoradd (new function vectoradd) Added infinite actors Removed bug in destroy timer Cloned actor may be selected in actions, scripts and in actor control dialog Added function getclone(cloneName) Added function getactor(x, y) Added new action 'Move To' Added Load and Save in Script editor More flexible tile draw (one tile draw and random tile added) Actor and tile snap (magnetic effect between actors or tiles) Define animation and sequence frame rate Vertical scroll in script editor (key navigation) Highlight active window New demo asteroids added New demo stars added New demo island added	Apr. 09. 2003
1.0 beta build 109	Bug "list directory empty" removed Listpop open like menu 'New game' and 'exit' dialog confirmation Actor, animation and action remove confirmation Bug in remove animation removed	Apr. 15. 2003
1.0 beta build 110	Linux version Bug "volume sound not set in PlaySound" fixed improved speed improved stability Added real_fps script variable Select actor in Actor Control Bug in slide control fixed Stop loop sound in editor mode GetKeyState script function added	May 04. 2003
1.1	Export stand alone games to Windows, Pocket PC and Linux New Activation Regions, Region actors, Activation events, Random and Counters Timers, Physical Response action, Collision Finish event, Local and user variables, Global scripts, sound pan control Receive key events on 'Any Key' getLastKey script function added getKeyText script function added remapKey script function added Optional repeat collision event while it is colliding Center new actor on screen Show actor's coordinate when click on actor Show actor's name when stop mouse on actor Key event handler optimized Many memory leaks removed Improved script execution C memory manipulation routines various bugfixes	Sept. 10. 2003
1.2	Actors with Mouse Button Down or Up events disables now pass click event to next actor New Canvas Actor and Drawing Functions New "Wire Frame Region" and "Filled Region" More control over sounds and music with new setPan, setVolume and stopSound functions Lock actors to avoid accidental moves in editor Click + right Ctrl move the grid regardless clicked actor Option "Don't draw, but allow events" added to action "Visibility State" for collision map only actors Get all colliding actors with specified actor with new getAllActorsInCollision functions Collision event based on the side of collide actor (used in many platform games) Fast game load by using caches after save Don't window resizes in game mode More long actor texts Replace animation files by using edit button More fast engine True Type Font support Image font preview with automated number of chars determination Multi-line text support Removing unused timers after save Removing variables Showing script line numbers Create variable arrays on variable panel Save and load global variables by groups using the saveVars and loadVars functions Remove and edit variables Tool tips help New tutorial system Animation preview on 'Add Animation' panel Automated horizontal and vertical frame determination on 'Add Animation' panel Numeric edit control with slide Support international keyboard layouts Custom grid colors Custom backdrop color Choosing path in the Path Finish event Crash recovery system Many bugfixes	May 28. 2004
1.2.1	More smooth and fast Improved Script Editor (Syntax colorize, automatic indentation, ...) Few more bugfixes	July 23. 2004
1.2.2	New clone array tool with real time preview New clone along path tool with real time preview	July 29. 2004
1.2.3	Script Editor now show current actor and event Copy and Paste from system clipboard New SuspendGame, PauseGameOn and PauseGameOff functions New option to suspend game if lost focus on desktop or receives a system message on Pocket PC (battery alerts, phone calls, ...) More bugfixes	Aug. 26. 2004
1.2.4	Better performance on Pocket PC games World limit increased Adjust safe margin for Out of Vision events Show game file icon on Windows and Pocket PC (for .ico icon files) Bug fixes	Oct. 16. 2004
1.2.6	High quality Ogg Vorbis in Pocket PC games New actors "Creator Actor" and "Parent Actor" (creator and parent in scripts) Recent Project List Actor list with grouped clones Show the current animation in "Replace Animation" panel Removed MP3 support	Nov. 20. 2004
1.2.7	Long animation support with minimal memory usage (good to play movies) Choice Pocket PC screen orientation (Normal, Upside down, Rotate left, Rotate right) More bugfixes	Dec. 13. 2004
1.2.8	New text input in Actor text New Mouse Enter and Mouse Leave events New Move Finish event New getAnimIndex and getAnimName functions Key Down Event can handle multiple keys (good to make cheat codes) Move To action with relative actor option Collision with infinite actors Editing events Editing and escape from Immediate or Wait for Frame action ESC key now can exit of game mode even if the game is on script loop "Use ESC key to exit game" option to exit from exported games without use ExitGame() Copy complete used game data when save game in other directory Many more bugfixes	Mar. 4. 2005
1.2.9	Persistent and multiple undo/redo levels New Script menu User can pick input text even if has no background Using the transparency information in gif files Actors, variables/functions, and variables buttons in the Global code editor Removed cache files "Check for Updates" option in Help menu More bugfixes	May 25. 005
1.3.0	Open ged files from explorer and with drag and drop Exit from game mode will restore the game even if LoadGame have been used Better memory management allow execution in low memory conditions Show message when has not enough memory to execute the game	June 20. 2005
1.3.1	Using system file dialog on Windows More safe save system Editing animation frames More function panels in the function list Show error message when try change the view screen coordinate Removed the collision test with the children of the the tested actor Add the export option "Game Data Only for Pocket PC" More bugfixes	Aug. 30. 2005
1.3.2	Event Inheritance Access to system date and time with new getTime() function Many more bugfixes	Sept. 20. 2005
1.3.3	Make games for Windows Mobile-based Smartphones Make games for Pocket PC VGA devices (resolutions 480x640, 640x480, 480x480) More Bugfixes	Nov. 21. 2005
1.3.4	New getOwner() and getHardwareID() functions for Pocket PC and Smartphones Exported games can be digitally signed Motion Compensation option for slow frame rates Works on Smartphones with Windows Mobile 2003 SE Sending all pending Key UP events after return from suspend mode Few bugfixes	Jan. 13. 2006
1.3.5	Make games for GP2X devices Make games for Handheld PC (HPC) devices Creating clones in the center of the screen Infinite loops in sound and music functions Can use one executable to open several games by file association (.gedx files) Custom extensions for the exported games file na Export mobile games with any resolution Bugfixes	Aug. 22. 2006
1.3.6	New 'Avoid' option in the Move To action thats allows move the actor through complex maps Smoother game render Can clone regions Bugfixes	Nov. 21. 2006
1.3.7	New Activation Region behavior: "An Actor will be destroyed by the Activation Region when it and your ascendants are outside of the view" New draw_from function allow draw the current actor frame into a canvas actor Allow multiple Game Editor instances 640 x 480 resolution in the GP2X Removed limitation of pensize in the setpen function Many bugfixes	Apr. 25. 2007
1.3.8	GP2X hardware blitter (up to 50% faster) Bugfixes	June 19. 2007
1.3.9	Make games for the GP2X F200 with touch screen support Using PocketHAL 1.0.2 Bugfixes	Nov. 16. 2007