FUTURE WORK

The editor framework presented in this chapter is a great beginning, but there are plenty of projects ahead for the would-be tools programmer. Remember that a game editor’s purpose is to enable rapid development and iteration. It should also be able to optimize the level files so that the game’s data is always as small as possible. Here are a few projects you can work on that will push this simple editor toward that goal:

Create mouse controls for moving and positioning actors in the game world. Follow the lead of many commercial editors and create a tool bar that can set the display panel to move objects instead of the camera.

Allow object picking with the mouse—this requires some additional cooperation between the display panel, the EditorHumanView, and the C# application.