WOG Editor overview
From wogedit
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Contents |
Overview
The purpose of the WOG editor is to allow user to edit game level.
This means that it is possible to edit:
- balls, pipe, strands, sign-post in level.bin
- layout, effects, geometry, physics in scene.bin
- add new images & sound resources in resrc.bin
The editor presents:
- a graphic view with the level & scene element. It will not be a in-game rendering, but an abstract rendering the will help visualize where the elements are.
- a scene/level/res tree to view the hierarchy of object and select which object is being edited
- a property list to edit the property of the selected object
The editor works directly on an existing game installation. It is recommended that you copy/paste your original installation in a new directory. That is copy the content of C:\Program Files\WorldOfGoo to C:\Program Files\WorldOfGoo-Mod for example.
Understanding the level editor view
The screen capture below show a rendition of level.xml data and scene.xml data of level Impale Sticky. Notes that the rendering in done in 2D, hence no depth of field effects.
The small black circles are the position of balls. Notes that balls are not always Goo balls.
The lines between those small black circles are the initial strands.
The exit pipe is represent by the black lines at the top.
The blue circle and rectangle are used for physic/collision management. They are mostly used to represent the "solid" part of the level the Goo can walk/construct on. But some are used to control the behavior. For example, the two long vertical rectangle on the edge of the cliffs have the tag "stopsign". This is used to prevent the Goo from jumping from the cliff: they can not cross thoses rectangles.
The long blue line on the left, bottom and right (leaning slightly) are mostly just like blue rectangle: they are used for collision management. They basically split the screen in half. They can be used to represent wall (level Ivy Tower for example), or level limit like in this level (the Goo construct will break apart uppon contact).
The yellow rectangle (and circle in a few level) repesents a zone where a force field is present. The orange line at the center of the rectangle indicates the direction (the brigther side is the direction of the force) and the intensity of the force.
The large orange line at the bottom is the gravity field. It has no specific zone. You can see that in this level that the gravity force will pull slighty toward the right and a lot toward the ground.
The cyan label is a sign-post, and the violet label is a particle effect. The one in the center 'gooSplatterEffect' actually has a position. The one at the bottom 'breezeRight' has no position. Such effect are always made visible slightly on the right of the 0,0 position (to avoid cluttering as it is usually used for the gravity force field).
Interaction with the Level View
The editor allow you to move and rotate scene elements in the view. Three modes of interactions are available in the level view, depending on the tool selected in the following tool bar:
The interaction modes from left to right are:
- Selection mode (shortcut: Space Bar)
- Pan mode (shortcut: key F)
- Move, resize and rotate mode (shortcut: key T)
Selection mode
In this mode, the the following action are associated to the mouse buttons:
- Left click: select an element under the mouse
- Left click + Alt key: cycle through under all elements under the mouse on click
- Middle button pressed: pan
- Left and Right buttons pressed: pan
Pan mode
In this mode, the the following action are associated to the mouse buttons:
- Left button pressed: pan
- Left and Right buttons pressed: pan
Move, resize and rotate mode
In this mode, the the following action are associated to the mouse buttons:
- Left click: start moving, rotating or resizing depending on the tool handle under the mouse cursor.
- Middle button pressed: pan
- Left and Right buttons pressed: pan
If you left click on a circular handle, a rotation operation is initiated. Maintains the left button pressed until the element has the desired angle. WARNING: there is a bug when rotating element inside compositegeom.
If you left click on a rectangular handle, a resize/rescale operation is initiated.
If you left click anywhere else, a move operation is initiated.
Notes that all operations have not been implemented for all elements yet (only circle supports resizing for instance).
Tutorials
"Your First Level" tutorial by Echopo
Developping WOG editor
It is written using python & PyQt.
Before you starting hacking into the source, you need to setup your environment. Checks the page Setting the development environment to do so.
Sources: The main is in src/wogeditor.py. The icons are in src/images. The *.ui are the dialog to edit using qtdesigner (installed with your pyqt, check you install menu).
If you change either the images or the *.ui, you need to run generate.bat in the src/ directory to generate the corresponding .py files.
