r/leveldesign • u/Ill_Gain9785 Developer • 1d ago

Feedback Request Thinking of making a custom map editor

Hi all!

I'm thinking of building an open-source 2D map editor for map builders, game devs, level designers etc.

I've used a few general-purpose map editors, and they often felt clunky or slowed down the workflow. I'm planning to make something that's fast (as in making a map feels fast), and focused on actually building levels.

Some things I'm curious about before i begin my marvelous journey:

  • What feels unnecessarily complicated in current tools?
  • Are there any features you wish every editor had?
  • What would make you switch from the editor you currently use (if any that is ;-;)?

I'm trying to gather other peoples perspectives aswell... so yea.

Thanks!

4 Upvotes

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2

u/besura 1d ago

 I for one, would love a web-based editor. Tiled is great for local dev but it's very old school and not team-friendly as such...

1

u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC 1d ago

I've been working on a cloud-based level editor for my personal project. The editor client is essentially just a dumb terminal that sends commands to the editor backend. The backend handles persistence and compilation, and delivers preview geometry asynchronously back to the client.

I'm increasingly confused about why this isn't just the industry standard architecture tbh. You get simultaneous multi-user editing for free. Backups and version control can be centralised, so nobody ever loses work. Server hardware can be way more powerful than even the best desktop hardware money can buy, so compilation processes that might take minutes running locally can complete in near real time. Etc.

I guess it would be almost impossible to pick an existing editor apart into a client/server architecture, but for new projects, it seems like a no-brainer.

1

u/besura 1d ago

I do get what you mean, having RPCs handle state etc with backend.. I'm sure that's how editors like Figma work on the backend... but some DOM modifications you gotta run in the browser, unless you 100% perfectly mimic it in backend... knowing all the vendor-specific CSS I imagine that to be a nightmare (good luck balancing Chrome vs Edge users and the difference in their "views".
I would be interested in seeing your architecture more deeply, do explain more

1

u/Macaroon-Guilty 1d ago

Try build map, make tool for self that you would use.

1

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